hello – i am writing you from inside my perfect day 🙂

i woke up this morning, finished and sent off my last major pressing piece of planning work – which means in the past 3 days i have completed two segments of league 2006 planning, my 360 staff evaluation, ruckus evaluations, compiling ruckus 2006 plans, two week-long organizational development retreat agendas…on roughly 7 total hours of sleep.

but i woke up this morning ready to go because i planned myself a great day today. i went to meet my sister and her boyfriend for arugula and goat cheese pierogis and kielbasa at veselka (this was the last day for those particular perfect pierogis as they were the flavor of the month – i was so happy to catch them one last time). then i took my sister to the baths, as this was her birthday gift. yesterday was her birthday and we celebrated at spoonbread. yummy, too.

when we got to the baths i booked her a dead sea salt scrub and a mud treatment. wednesday is women’s day, so everyone can go nude and its the healthiest feeling, to be around women in the heat. the whole time i am taking mental pictures, everyone of every shape and variety looks so beautiful in the ritual of community bathing and sweating and indulgence. i created a peppermint water mix to toss over the heat in one room, which makes every pore of your body feel the way your mouth feels with a peppermint patty in it…remarkably clean inside and out.

near the end of the baths autumn and i crept upstairs where the men were working to brazenly smoke a j there. one young worker said he’s been here a month, comes from a country near afghanistan where they role them ‘like my finger, so thick’. we laughed, and they all laughed at us in russian.

then i had my higher level thought for the day, which was that you get to an age where right and wrong become more clear, and where doing right becomes noble. and autumn said, but that doesn’t ensure there is a universal truth. but then i thought, it can if you imagine the truth as a non-linear thing, as a four dimension thing, or even as merely a spine, that only if all the pieces that can be right align are you truly in a place to function – which, like the spine’s alignment, is a miracle. universal truth is the miracle of flow, the alignment of rightness in your heart, and you feel in an honest place with life when the different parts of your life are flowing. some people flow from working hard and action, some from deep relaxation and contemplation – i need equal parts both.

so…then my sister and i walked down the city – i had finally scheduled the massage i got for my birthday from kate and arie. i walked down from the baths, past st marks and all the stylish people. my sister and i parted ways and i kept walking, winding my way through the neighborhoods to chinatown, a brisk pace on the sunny side of the street on a warm day. WITH my mariah carey soundtrack putting the betty boop pep in my step.

and then i found love in the hands of an old chinese man in a basement on mott street. his name is tony, his game is acupressure, and he left me transformed. i gasped, i sighed, i moaned, i giggled from the good pain releasing from me, i breathed through it. i reached a peak that only be imagined as a whimper. afterwards i couldn’t take my eyes off of him, or stop murmuring wonderful wonderful. i tipped him extravagantly.

and THEN i walked home on the south side of the manhattan bridge. some folks prefer the brooklyn bridge, but the manhattan at sunset is the boss move. the brooklyn bridge is gorgeous with the sun behind it, and the city finally looks whole again to me, i don’t see it as a wounded place. i am glad to live here now when i can see the city this way, a little lower, more equality on both sides of the bridges, nothing jarring in either skyline. i am glad i got to see the boats cutting across the white glassy surface, watch the surface warm as the sun fell, all the buildings and the happeningness of all the people. the grafitti that side of the bridge, the kids making out in a nook this side of the bridge. remember when you kissed so furiously because you were pretending passion…before learning of tenderness and the brink and going deeper into pleasure that shakes your very spirit.

and still to come – dinner with my newly engaged dear friend isaac; possible drinks with a young man i might take as a lover if he can hold my interest – he’s an actor and perhaps could fulfill my fantasy of someone whispering ‘to sleep perchance to dream’ against my neck as night comes; dessert to celebrate a friend’s birthday. and i’m watching close encounters of the third kind.

this, so its down for the record, is my perfect day. my work is done, my body is relaxed, my heart is full, my mind is clear and my time isn’t done.

my friend billy parish is in montreal this week for the International Climate Negotiations in Montreal and you should definitely check out their blog. http://www.itsgettinghotinhere.org/

all is full of love, it’s all around you – bjork