Departures...

Leaving Atlanta, Philadelphia-bound; a brief stop on the journey to Lawrence Massachusetts, where you'll find me for the next 10 months... gotta jet!

photo: vintage Vogue Magazine image

Springs Eternal...

Sometimes we have a little trouble reconciling the past with the present with the future.

But Hope Springs Eternal in the Hearts of Men.

And now, it's time.

On the fly...

So.

Two days ago, I found out I was accepted into a lovely Volunteer program.

The exciting part: I'll spend the next 10 months teaching in Massachusetts.

The exasperating part: I had one day to pack up everything I could fit in my car, and hardly a spare moment to say goodbye to Boulder. Yesterday was spent packing and cleaning like a maniac, with my angelic godsend of a cousin who drove out from Denver to help... I wouldn't have been able to do it without her.

And then last night, I went bouldering in the mountains, digging my fingers into that Rocky Mountain Rock for one last time.

Today, I drove about 1,000 miles. The mountains disappeared so quickly from my rearview mirror. Kansas was hot as Hades. And Columbia, Missouri? Well... I'm grateful for this hotel bed, but that's about it.

What a whirlwind.

...God knows I'm at my best when I'm on my toes (which is why I love wearing heels...).

With a Hey Nonny Nonny!

I watched Much Ado About Nothing last night for several reasons.

1. After subjecting myself to the dismal, stomach-wrenching sacrilege of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's go at Taming of the Shrew, I was in desperate need of some deftly handled Bard.

2. Much Ado's clever banter always seems to remind me what I'm looking for.

3. It never fails to lighten my spirits.

From those opening lines, with Emma Thompson perched so perfectly in an olive tree, reading to the picnic on the Tuscan hillside, it gets me.

Sigh no more, ladies.

Sigh no more.

Men were deceivers ever.

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey Nonny Nonny!

With a quick opening scene and a prelude of what's to come, the viewer is then surrendered to the joyous strains of Patrick Doyle's masterful score, which sweeps you down the hillside, back to the villa, infecting your blood with the high spirited anticipation of what's to come.

The best part, however, is the masterful execution of banter between Emma Thompson's Beatrice and Kenneth Branaugh's Benedick. After watching an over-the-top Petruchio who milked the audience in awkward silences that he misinterpreted as interest, and the hectic Katherine who threw tantrums, not shrew storms, on stage, throwing Shakespeare's clever lines back and forth at each other at level 11 with little emotional range and less understanding of what they were saying, it was like manna from heaven to watch Beatrice and Benedick. Thompson and Branaugh deliver lines as though they were modern vernacular, as though these words, and none other, sprang to mind. They don't ride Shakespeare's clever coattails. They breathe his artform like it is air. And they leave me smiling.

Beatrice: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.

Benedick: God keep your ladyship still in that mind, so some gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate scratched face.

Beatrice: Scratching could not make it worse on't were such a face as yours...

Benedick: When I said I will die a bachelor, I did not think I would live till I were married...

Beatrice: I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest...

Benedick: Thou and I are too wise to love peaceably.

Benedick: Serve God. Love me. And mend.

Benedick: For man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion...

The View from Here.

So, those dreams I whispered into my palms and lifted to the wind? I'm waiting to see if they fly back home with an olive branch...

In the meantime, I'm recalling a rather stellar view, at the top of the chairlift in Beaver Creek, after we ascended from the chapel in the valley to the mountain top villa for my cousin's wedding reception.

(that's me, with my cousin, in a silly cuz moment.) The view was splendid... a view of gorgeous mountains, great friends, and grand dreams for the future.

What's your favorite view? Seascape or Mountain Vistas? Amber waves of grain or city skylines?

images: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema painting, photos by Wendy Scipione at Aspen Grove Photography

Got My Head In The Clouds

Running from the Thunder.

Proud as I can be.

I am waiting for the gray to replace the black in me,

Oh Daddy, will the sun come up again?

Hello Lieblings.

Sometimes, life leaves you a little anxious.

You look behind you and see a multi-colored, sparkling past, fading a little around the edges.

You look from side to side, and you see the present, in an aesthetic rush of now-ness.

And then you look ahead, to where the future lies, and it's all corners and shadows.

It's like being in Limbo.

So you reach up and hold onto the light you have around you.

You whisper dreams into your hands and then you lift them into the wind.

And you wait.

Shouldn't we be making any effort needed to stop our dreams from fading?

photos: Splash by Tata Uskova from 500 px, ladouleur exquise from vi.sualize.us, dusk polaroid w20 from whateverlife.com, street at night image by Quim Dasquens from 500 px, Nightime Butterfly by Mikhail Pochuev, pink sky burds from stumbleupon.com, Fading by Anouk

Glimmer of...

Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket...

Hello, Darlings.

Lately I've been mediating "day-by-day" with "let's be practical" with "dream big" with "pull a Scarlett" with a considerable dose of

Holly Golightly.

Who are you today?

You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-You-Are? You're chicken. You've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're terrified somebody's going to stick you in a cage. Well, baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somaliland. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.

photo: bottle it up; week 5 by Ashley from vi,sualize.us.com, image from dressdesigndecor.blogspot.com