v.d.

Saturday was a great day and seems to have marked another shift in me (though that may not be obvious in what I'm writing). C and I were supposed to go for a weekend meditation retreat centered around money and our personal relationships with it -- which, with the recent slash in my salary due to the economic downturn, seemed like a good idea -- but we had had a glitch in our platonic love affair the Monday prior, and I felt the need for some space, particularly since we wouldn't be able to talk about us during the retreat.

First thing Saturday morning, I went to the Blue Dahlia to pick up compost (aka, pig slop), five 5-gallon buckets of it. I usually go through it right away, pull out the stuff that Tinkerbell, the resident pot-bellied, won't eat -- citrus, squash peels, onions -- or shouldn't -- foil butter pats, drinking straws, paper, plastic wrap. (An aside: Recently, Tinkerbell ate a latex glove, probably from the old folks home across the street. I discovered it coming out of her butt. She was in distress, foaming at the mouth, but M fed her some extra food and it worked its way out.) Anyway, I didn't go through the compost right away because it was cold out, and even though I wear rubber dish gloves, my hands hurt when I go through the slop on a cold day. So I vacuumed my truck out instead -- a little V.D. gift for me -- while S made eggs and potatoes to serve with the biscuits he'd made the night before as a V.D. gift to all of us.

At 1:00, I went to my improv class, which was pretty good, then went from there to nearby Hyde Park and picked up our box of produce for the week and brought it home for S to deal with. Then I went through the compost, even though it wasn't much warmer out.

I rushed from there to my friend G's house in South Austin. He was hosting a tea party with a friend (N) who recently spent two years in Taiwan learning all about tea. He had fascinating stories to tell as he served different tea varieties. I was only there for the last hour of the three-hour party, but G, N and I were tea-drunk by the end of it, laughing and dancing to the music the two of them were playing in tandem from their laptops.

The next thing on the schedule was the dance, dinner and concert at the space where the dance group I sometimes meet up with (more often recently). C called while I was at G's house from the meditation retreat to tell me he was going to go to the V.D. event as well. We made plans to travel together. I went to his house and gave him the V.D. card I had made for him the Sunday night previous. We had spent all day that Sunday together making cards for others, then I came home and made one specifically for him; when we had the glitch on Monday, I didn't know what to do about sending it, feeling the way I did, so I didn't mail it, but then gave it to him in person, which isn't t quite as good as receiving it in the mail, to be sure, but he appreciated it.

The dance was great. The usual stuff, except at the end, C, P1, M and I ended up in a three-song four-person embrace. C had talked to M about what was going on between us a couple of nights before, and P1 kind of knew, I think, because she reads my blog. But there was so much affection in that little circle that the tears just streamed down my face throughout the second two songs. I don't remember the exact words of the last song, but it was something like "You are love and you are precious and this is perfect." I wanted it to last forever. It was a healing for C and me. (Yet another!)

After the dance, dinner was served, yummy, healthy vegetarian food, cous cous, veggie stew, kale salad and cornbread. C snagged the very last lemon square, and halved it with me, then I halved my half with another person, and he halved his half twice and ended up with just a tiny little bit of lemon-sugar goodness.

We went inside and sat against the wall behind the people who had the foresight to bring pillows and blankets to sit on and wrap themselves in. My old friend L -- who introduced me to this crazy dance thing -- sang a set of new songs, after having been out of the scene for a couple of years following the birth of her child. She always tells me I make her laugh more than just about anybody, but she's pretty damn funny, too.

While she sang, C, P1, M and I touched each others' hearts, held hands and massaged one another all curled up in the love bundle we had started at the end of the dance. I was in heaven; I think we all were.

And then M sang her songs of love lost and love desired and it was all right as rain.

(graphic: "Jesus Healing a Broken Heart" ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, obviously...)