Progress!

Tonight was a lovely night, a lovely night indeed.

It was rainy and I was ruminating and marinating of thoughts on my mind and I could have curled up at home but no my friends, NYC called as did my wonderful new friend Andrea. Andrea and I met in true NY fashion when I was hosting trivia night and her boyfriend brought her along and we just CLICKED. Clicked in a way I haven't just clicked in a while with someone, like legos when they finally snap into place. Snap! Ah, yes, that feels right. Thus began a delightful fizzy beginning of a long string of romantic friend dates  (picnics on the hudson, mojitos in Brazilian gardens, etc) which greatly confuse her boyfriend.

Tonight, it was jazz.

I ventured in the rain and my amazing "new" (read hand me down) black back-zipper pants to Cafe Vivaldi at

32 Jones St, not far from where Andrea and I live blissfully close to one another, to see the Dymaxion Quartet a delightful band of Andrea's former drum teacher, a bassist, a trumpeter, and one very cute saxophone player (seriously, it is impossible for me to go anywhere and not fall in love with someone's eyes and talent). Here's what I like about jazz: hearing the notes makes me feel as if I am being extended a massive box of crayola crayons and walls turn white and colorable and I scribble drawings all over them in time wit h the notes. Yellow exclamation dots and blue concentric circles, green boxes, red bursts over black lines. When I listen to jazz I close my eyes and lose myself in the musings on the music and the creations created in live audible color. I can paint a picture and out of the picture comes a story and out of the story lives my life and it grooves and bops with my ebbs and flows.

Andrea and I ordered a mini bottle of champagne, toasted to ourselves, and settled into an evening of choose your own adventure style music with audience interaction, song-name wit (ie Wollman's Rink: No one ice skates angry, this tune's no exception), and, did I mention, a very cute wedding-ring less saxophone player.

You may think, "oh, I bet she dates the saxophone player and brings him to the Louis Armstrong house!" but not tonight my friends, tonight was about me and Andrea and the jazz and our fizzy lovely drinks.

BUT, there is a reason this entry is called progress which I think many an NYC gal can relate (and perhaps anywhere where one walks home alone from an evening out) and that involves the dreaded WALK HOME IN SILENCE. You may not know it but apparently walking a mere ten minutes alone without headphones is the time where I call men in my life that I probably should not be calling. Exes I am not yet 100 percent over, men who live hundreds of miles away with whom there could be a spark. It's just filler and it's embarrassing but it's an activity I have honed my skills incredibly well in over the years in new york and walking home after an evening on the town.

But not tonight! No, tonight, instead, the music continued to play in my mind and I breathed air into my marinations from the day (my new mantra? I wish us peace.) and called, instead of voids where I wished love existed, those who I do love and who love me already. Sally and Kim and Travis and David and others not previously mentioned in this blog, and then I tip toed among the rain drops and wished for peace in myself and in others while jazz music played in my head. A simple step, yes, and one I've taken before, but not so deliberately and conscientiously as tonight.

"Borrowed moments of fleeting serenity"

L.A.