Cupid Ain't Stupid, that's for sure.....

It's in the air. I know I'm holiday hoppin' here, but I mean to. I want to jump from one "feel~good" to the next, and nope, I'm not racing through 'em... I'm racin' to 'em! It's kind of like getting a good seat on the sidewalk for the next parade, you gotta get there early.....

So here it is, St. Valentines Day, parked right around the corner. Pretty soon I'll have to trip over giant red hearts in the grocery store just to buy beer. Helium balloons the size of space ships will be hovering overhead, their bobbing ribbons tickling my hair while I shop for macaroni and cheese. The jewelry stores will all get together and come up with some new" have-to-have": a ring, a chain, a bracelet, that will brand any woman without one on the morning after as ......well.....valentineless, or soul mate to a poor man. A million red roses will be sacrificed for the moment, bundled and jumbled and sold for a fortune. The writers at Hallmarkwill collapse from exhaustion, worn out from feeling the love and padding their pockets.

Here in Hippie Holiday Land, we do it a little bit different.

"Patty cake
Patty cake
Baker's man,
Role em' and a dole em
and throw 'em in a pan".....

Ta! Dah! Love beads everywhere!

You wanna feel the love? Email your postal and I'll bop a string in the mail to you! Yeah, Cupid Ain't Stupid, she's got blonde hair and wears hand me down jeans....





Here's mine, almost twenty years later.....We started with three little beads, peace, love and hope, and they grew.... The colors and stories have changed, but I still feel the love.....remember the night we sat at the table a lifetime ago, Skinny and I, making love beads, saving the world......

Something always gives me away.....

They were two beautiful people. Right off the glossy pages of magazines I never read. His hair just just so, matching the square jaw and tiny little cleft chin God had given him. His nails the color of the very, very heart of a conch shell....lacquared by nature. He was tall and I imagined, quite in shape. I could see him only from the waist up, and her from the Magic Bra line up.

Her teeth were mighty whites. Almost shocking. I couldn't help but, well, kind of stare. Her little tongue toyed out from behind her painted lips and traced her upper deck. I imagined she was testing to see if she could feel the flaw of lipstick there. Accidently smeared across her platinum pearls.
She fidgeted.

He smiled this huge "I'm not really a Doctor, but I play one in print ads" smile, leaned over the counter, fanning the Patient Sign In list off his imromptu podium and started his speel......

"We're just stopping by this morning to offer you ladies a complimentary day in paradise. Our salon offers solutions to all beauty concerns, an escape from the ordinary, and all in a blissful, all female environment. Our staff is fully licensed and trained and offer the latest in innovative techniques to improve your body and soul. The Perfect Passion offers mud baths, waxings, hair design and coloring, laser and non surgical face and body lifts, passive muscle toning, all in a feminine and friendly environment......"

I smile. Slouch a little more perfectly in my chair. Plop the grafittied cast up on my side of the counter. Chey leans in. Listening. She's always wanted to have her ear fixed, the one with the tear down the center of the lobe, a little reminder that when she was 16 she got in a tiff wearing really, really big hoops.

The "Hi! I just turned 21!" pretty girl to his left fidgets again.... leans in just a little.... and then when he takes the slightest of breaths, she blurts out in a barely-more-than-a-whisper "I just saw Santa Claus" woosh.....

"Ohhhhh....."

"Are you a hippie?"

I smile a little broader.

Handsome one gathers up his glossy print tickets to Paradise, clears his throat, and mutters "You ladies have a nice day" .....

Sheesh......

How do you think they knew?

Faces.....

Tomorrow I will paint my face. I will put on "erase" to white-out the black martini moon under my right eye. And "blush" to blend it all together. I'll be glad that I haven't trimmed my bangs in forever, and they hang in my face and I have to go "poof" to see out through them.

Tomorrow, I will wear a mask.

Probably, by Tuesday, I'll bore of it
and just be another
hippie chic
with
a black eye....

and love beads.....

Eighteen today

I wear love beads and I believe...




Some things never change…..

Tagged......

Lizard Princess tagged me a while ago, bless her heart, and patience…she said there was no time limit, and I think I made this part up, no rules! “Six weird things about me”….

Sweet Spado Man Meme’d me and now it’s in the bag.

That’s the tag, so here goes….

Because it’s me, I don’t really think it’s weird (or I wouldn’t do it), but maybe the neighbors do…..

1. I don’t open my mail. I don’t even bug-eye it. I barely even take it out of the mailbox. I wait until it’s totally stuffed full and the mailman, the nice mailman, starts flinging it on my screen porch and then I walk down the gravel drive-way and shimmy it out of it’s cocoon. I walk straight to the car and toss it on the passenger’s floorboard. I don’t ride on that side so it never gets in the way of my feet. I hate bills, letters from attorney’s, collection Agencies, and chain letters. I don’t throw it out because you never know when you’ll get pulled over and need something important and at least I can “act” like I’m digging for it…

2. I "tink". I believe in it.

3. I wear love beads. Don’t take ‘em off. Love beads and borrowed and found charms. Just keep adding to the leather love around my neck. Joe’s peace charm, a trinket lost and then found from Skinny’s wedding, a cross found in the sand, an Italian horn, blessed, and borrowed from a neighbor, the MOM charm my babies saved for……and the love beads Skinny and I made a million years ago. I don’t take ‘em off for weddings, funerals, work. I don’t take them off to match my costume. I wear them. Touch them. Feel them. Love them.

4. I fly in my sleep. Not casually. Really fly. Kind of like Jet Blue Naked.

5. I have rules. I make them up as I go along. Social rules, road rules, house rules, blogging rules, work rules, love rules, peace rules….. The “I’m never ever gonna do this again….” kinda rules. Or “from now on” this kinda rule. “That aint right” kinda rule….. All kinds of rules….

6. I break them.

Now I have to “tag” six other souls to this chain….hmmmmm……

It’s all good, There’s no time limit………

May the circle be unbroken....

A Sign of the Times

So today, this precious little lady reaches up to my neck and gingerly touches my love beads, cradles them in her hand.
"Oooohhh, they're so pretty, so unusual" she says in her perfectly lipsticked 80 year old voice. " I've never seen a steering wheel charm before".....

"Tell Me About Your Rings..."

"Tell me about your rings..." he said so quietly, staring at my hands and the mismatched collection of meanings displayed there. This stranger, that I had known for only an hour or so curious as to the stories displayed on my fingers. Why did he want to know? What was he looking for? I looked down at my hands through his eyes..."What love story goes untold here?"

Instinctively, I reached up and touched my love beads, old and oiled with the patina of a thousand thoughts, touches, moments. I'll tell you about my rings, sweet stranger, but these trinkets, closest to my heart, that is where the love story lies...at peace....at rest....

For 19 years, this tattered string of leather (oh, it's been reincarnated a few times!) has been tethered to my neck. The three little clay love beads, once a swirling kaliedescope of color, now muted and sepia at best, were sculpted at my kitchen table, late late at night. Paige and I on an endless mission to spread peace and love to the world at large. We wove peace grapevine wreaths in those days , did string paintings of the world at war with peace watercolored across it's face. We believed. If we loved, we hoped, we prayed, we dared.....peace and love would come to all.

For a million moons, only the little love beads, strung like lonesome soldiers, dangled here. The soldered welded Peace symbol was a Sunday afternoon gift from my neighbor, Joe. God bless my Joe. I was hot, and tired, and trudging through knee high grass fighting a lawn mower with an adolescent attitude. I was overwhelmed with life and bills and the endless, never ending,rocky road trip that my life had become. In the blazing Sun, with tears and sweat fighting for first rights on my cheeks, I screamed at the sky above, at the random birds....at the top of my lungs....."I just want Peace!" The raspy choking lawn mower I was sure had camoflouged my impromptu rant. I kicked the dirt and kept mowing.

Joe never explained himself that day. He didn't have to. When I rolled the mower to the gate, he met me in the driveway. The little Peace Symbol still warm in his hands. I touched it. Felt it. He passed it to me. The first trinket to join my love beads. In the weeks to follow, it began to rust and I worried. Joe had sculpted this for me on a hot Sunday afternoon and I wanted to wear it forever. I rubbed it. Never ever took it off. The rust gave up. In the end, peace wins....

There is a tiny little "I love you Mom" charm. I can still see my daughter's eyes, 8 years old and so excited she had to help me unwrap her little gift. I hope that for as long as she lives, she can still see the look in my eyes. Love.

An Italian horn. A gift from a friend when all my good luck spells were broken. When peace was lost. When I had not yet discovered the yellow butterfly of San Marino. She dug it out of her jewelry box. To her, it was the yellow butterfly. To me, it was and always will be, reassurance, a reminder that hope is sometimes all you have....don't ever, ever let go of it.

Four hearts in the shape of a clover. This little one is etched with the markings of sand and time, a little jewel lost to sea and washed up at my feet by the tides. A precious promise from Paige, lost almost immediately, I ached and searched and finally, too many beers later, cried. Not because the little charm was lost forever, but because I wouldn't have it there, to touch, when I needed to remember, to hold real, her thoughts. And so it was meant to be, that when we least expected it, a little glint of silver glittered, and in the miles and miles of salty sand, I reached down and there she was. The mermaids charm.

May our lives be blessed. With simple things.

Peace and love

Love story to Joe in the January archives of www.Justgivemepeace.blogspot.com
Self portrait in love beads and Joe's precious Peace symbol all over the pages of Just Give Me Peace