First and Ninth

Last year this time, I traveled to Italy and was given the amazing opportunity to visit what I refer to as an outside museum of art in Rome and Florence. While the weather was less than favorable and Air Italia forgot to send my luggage along for three days, the experience overcame any negative circumstance. I’d like to go on about the stone streets that flatter your steps with casts of beauty at every ancient structure, but without live senses (touch, sight, smell) the moment makes no sense. Its not fair to try and explain the haunting feeling of times’ past as you walk through 1200 years of Ancient Roman history. To walk past the actual “David” in Florence and to give thanks in prayer at The Vatican is not an emotion I can describe in words. As you can expect, the food was decadent and there was no shortage of European fun. Aside from the gift of love, I would provide the gift of travel. I believe that in discovery and introduction, you find new and exciting life and love.

In life we carry soft memories that help us deal with reality’s hard pain. ~SDM

LA BELLA DONNA DELLA MIA MENTE (Lovely Lady of My Memory)

by: Oscar Wilde

MY limbs are wasted with a flame,
My feet are sore with travelling,
For, calling on my Lady’s name,
My lips have now forgot to sing.

O Linnet in the wild-rose brake
Strain for my Love thy melody,
O Lark sing louder for love’s sake,
My gentle Lady passeth by.

She is too fair for any man
To see or hold his heart’s delight,
Fairer than Queen or courtesan
Or moonlit water in the night.

Her hair is bound with myrtle leaves,
(Green leaves upon her golden hair!)
Green grasses through the yellow sheaves
Of autumn corn are not more fair.

Her little lips, more made to kiss
Than to cry bitterly for pain,
Are tremulous as brook-water is,
Or roses after evening rain.

Her neck is like white melilote
Flushing for pleasure of the sun,
The throbbing of the linnet’s throat
Is not so sweet to look upon.

As a pomegranate, cut in twain,
White-seeded, is her crimson mouth,
Her cheeks are as the fading stain
Where the peach reddens to the south.

O twining hands! O delicate
White body made for love and pain!
O House of love! O desolate
Pale flower beaten by the rain!

Fall in New York City is a brisk walk through the Union Square Farmer’s Market.  It’s that time of year when parks welcome ice skaters and sky scrapers cast shadows on the streets before we leave the office.  Our Fall brings corner vendors with everything you could possibly need to survive a NYC winter.  From hot dogs to animal head beenies: you need it, they’ve got it. A New York City Fall forces the half of the Island that doesn’t like football to get on board for the sake of “fitting in”.  Some close up their homes in the Hamptons while others move into dorms and get ready for school at NYU.  We start to recognize the neighborhood homeless as they prepare to settle in for the cold winter.  Many of us cleverly think up the perfect Halloween and SantaCon costume and properly attend every masquerade ball within a 2 mile radius…we don’t like to travel too far. Central Park fills with athletes training for Spring races and spray tanners rotate through salons like its an amazing race.  Its time for the ritualistic swap from a closet full of summer gear to your best winter wear.  We always, “forgot we had that”!  No self respecting local steps foot into Macy’s and we welcome tourists with a smile and a gentle shove in the right direction.  Every year New Yorkers claim to hate those silly street fairs but tah dah!…there’s another one and you can’t help but admit that there’s something a little special about them.  There’s something a lot special about New York and as Thanksgiving approaches, I am forever thankful for what this city has to offer in cultural, financial, artistic and inexplicable richness. A New York City Fall can’t get any better than a brisk walk, hearing the sounds of a hundred languages but only listening to the words of the ones I love.