Champagne Tales

The following is a work of fiction, and a continuation from the previous posts, Chapter 1-2: I thought it would take me much longer to figure out who my new neighbors were, due mostly to the fact that I had turned into an extreme introvert. I wasn't the kind of neighbor who would bring in your trash can for you if you were out of town. Or for that matter, I wasn't the kind of neighbor who was ever asked to do a simple task as that. I had kept to myself on the usually vacant street, and I had preferred it that way. I had woke that next morning, still with no idea what day of week it was, and heard laughter again. It was again like a bullet piercing my chest. Oh how I used to laugh. My twenties and thirties were filled with endless laughter, cocktails, and traveling. My forties had turned a different path. It looked something like a mixture of insecurity, seclusion, sadness, but still endless cocktails. I had lived here with a constant sense of not knowing what time it was. I li...

The following is a work of fiction, and a continuation from the previous post titled, Chapter 1:  The next few days looked almost exactly the same as the previous weeks. I woke up late in the morning, went for almost an hour walk on the beach, ate a late brunch, read in the late afternoon, and if it needed it, I did some house work. Dinners were the most intricate affair of my day, involving homemade creamy pastas, or angel hair lemon pasta with a garnish of capers. My love for Italian food stems from the time I lived there in my twenties, but more on that later. Cooking made me forget about everything else in my life. For that hour or two I spent in the kitchen inventing new recipes, chopping anything from peppers to fillets of fresh fish caught just that day, to eating the final dish, I escaped from the world. I was creating something – something every human craves to do in this world, whether it's painting, writing, cooking – we all crave and need to create. Cooking was what ...

The following is a work of fiction: Ever since I left Henry, I have felt like some part of me has been missing. When I'm laughing at a funny movie, I find myself questioning if what I'm watching is even funny. Or if I'm out to lunch with a friend, it's as if a part of me was only half heartedly hearing what they were saying, even though my undivided attention is on them. It was more than feeling like something was missing - something was missing. I wish I could tell you that my life is pieced together into a perfect web of circumstances and tales. I wish I could tell you that I'm a loving woman who didn't deserve to fall out of love with a man who so deeply cared about me. I wish I could tell you that I appreciated my beauty, that I cared about others more than myself, or that I am making a difference in the world. Better yet, I wish I knew the woman I was destined to be in this world. Instead, I sit here on a cool night, smoking what I promise to myself ...

“You see those lights in the distance?” “Where?” the excitement was building in her voice. They had climbed halfway up a mountain after they realized the train didn’t make it to the top. “Wait for it – there!” She let out a small gasp, “I see it! What are those?” “Those are the fountain lights outside of the palace - they light up every single night.” “Beautiful” was all she could mutter from her mouth. “Indeed. They are even more beautiful from this view.” She let the silence stand between them as she looked at the fountain lights mesmerized by the ever-changing, glowing colors. It felt like a dream, something completely surreal. “Most people don’t know that you can see the lights from up here.” “Really?” “Yeah, they think you have to be right next to the foundations. Like every other tourist,” he spoke impressed with himself that he had led her and their few other friends up here to the top of this mountain and shared with her this secret view. She laughed at h...

I joined an email list for a 30 Days of Gratitude challenge. I'm absolutely in love with this quote. Ironic for this to follow after I post to write drunk, edit sober.

Ernest Hemingway spoke very wise words, "Write drunk; edit sober." I read this quote on a picture frame in my friends apartment this week and I immediately fell in love with this quote. Beyond just the reason that I love to drink, but because there is actually some immense truth behind this. When we are drunk, our standards are lowered. We say things we never would say if we were sober, and absolutely ridiculous things seem to make sense. How many times have you woken up the next day after a drunken evening and thought to yourself, "why did I think that was a good idea?" But look beyond just a drunken evening. Look at the idea here that with absolutely no inhibition, the thoughts would just continue to pour out of my mind and translate into words. Even more so than the words, great ideas might be born. Ridiculous thoughts that never would have crossed your mind if it weren't for the four glasses of wine. Revisit the story 24 hours later and make edits, whic...

I ventured home this weekend and visited my friends and family, which sparked a questions I have grappled with my whole life: where is home? When is the exact moment in time when you call one location your home? What if you know that your whole life you might float around between a variety of cities? What do you call home? I started struggling with this question when I was in college. I was driving back from visiting my family in Chicago and in those past two weeks I had been in almost half a dozen other states and locations. As I sat there in the car, I realized that I was fulfilled seeing my family at home, yet I was anxiously wanting to get back to the friends I called my family at school. It was during that car ride that I realized home can no longer be an exact location for me or else I might go crazy with sadness. This realization became ever more true as I graduated from undergraduate, and more and more of my friends began venturing around the entire countr...