Dignity is soooo last year

In the last three weeks everything has been “happening” for me. I have been offered jobs across the globe and now it is fine tuning and choosing my next path or journey. Gratitude fills my body and mind. I am quite content on my current journey and enjoy the Southern Italian way of life. I have best friends, great fun, beautiful sea, language and wine that is out of this world.

I have done many of things and have met many people. I have a new attitude and new light. Something has taken over and my wings are completely spread as far and wide as they will go. I can not be any happier, as I sit here I am grinning from ear to ear with pure love.

 I went out on fun nights with my friends, in the city center, playing in the small streets, riding on the back of motorbikes, drinking wine and dancing to Spanish music. Last night I locked eyes with a handsome man, I gave him the finger and he stuck out his tongue. I made a silly face and he laughed giving me the finger back. He walked over to me and started dancing to an Italian song. We had to leave because the music was loud and he could not understand my broken Italian. My friends were leaving and I followed, he walked me to the end of the old town and decided it would be in my best interested to kiss him intensely under the mist of rain that was slightly coming from the sky. Mist came up from the cobble stone path, and I kissed him with such passion and then walked away with out even turning around. I left him stunned and he called me the next morning. Shameless

My newest conclusion is that shame and dignity are 2010 and fun and passion are so 2011. Besides who the hell needs dignity when you are kissing Italian boys in the rain? Not, I

And the green grass grows all around, all around...

My mind is racing from chasing you in my dreams at night; I don’t know how to slow it down. Slowly packing my belongings in a beaten up suitcase that has been more places than most people I know have dreamed of traveling. Again. Leaving behind a lover, friends and family. Waiting for him to scream wait, don’t leave at my door steep; with a boom box blaring some cheesy 80’s song. But, this is reality and he is Russian who is unaware of 1980’s music or boom boxes. What is it that I want from him? Do I want him to ask me to stay? But, if he did like others in the past I would do just the opposite, I would kiss him intensly and say goodbye my love. Maybe shed a tear or two and hop on the next plane and pray a cutie is assigned the seat next to mine.  If he did this I would not have the overwhelming feelings I have for him. Perhaps that is the real reason I like/love/adore him, because he is not all over me, crying and pledging “ohhh bella don’t leave me, don’t leave me”. He never was the romantic one, very matter of fact, very South Russian.

            I have thought about a head scan, maybe just maybe there is a disease called “the grass is greener on the other side” or “I want what I can’t have”. I am looking at the grass in my backyard, it looks pretty thirsty and brown to me, I think about the grass in Bari, when I think of it there is not much grass in that city. I am holding my cell phone contemplating my physicians number and if they can prescribe anything for “greener syndrome”  I have always wanted something that I couldn’t have, and in the end quite truthfully I have received it. When whatever I sought out was in my hands or in my heart it was never as good as expected. If a man is courting me, calling constantly, to available, to telling or emothional I am completely uninterested, but if he is distant I am all over that challenge like “white on pasta bianco” (white pasta in Italia).

I sat in my childhood room wondering and dreaming about Korea, and what I would experience, who I would meet, what I would learn. I sat in my small apartment in Korea, wondering about Southeast Asia, where I would go, who I would meet and what I would keep in my heart. Secrets only for my soul. I sat on an airport floor in Indonesia wondering about America, what would happen, if I would be happy and my future marriage. I sat in my apartment I shared with my ex fiancé dreaming and crying of being free, sun kissed Mediterranean beaches and of Europe. Travel and wonder lust ran through my veins. I sat on a plane to Sicily thinking of what the next year of my life would come to, why my relationship didnt work, and how this family I was going to be living with would change my life forever. In Sicily I wanted Roma (rome) I wanted to live there with everything I ever breathed. In Bari I sat talking to my girlfriends over coffee on a warm November day wanting to live in Spain, Turkey, Dubai and South America. It hit me hard like a smack in the face, like a shot of something strong; Am I searching for something? And if I am what the heck is it? Will I ever want to “stop” to settle?

I sat at the table in my best friend’s house in admiration of her perfect kitchen and beautiful new home, her husband texting her cell, her children tugging at her heels and puppy asleep on his soft pillow. My heart was swelling with pride, love and happiness for her. Perhaps it was the oyxtocin that is excreting it self through my body like wild fire when a woman is around children she loves. I going to blame it on the hormones, but for a second I wanted that too. Wanted a husband and children with their sticky fingers pulling at my pant legs and their soft voices echoing down the halls of my own home. When I searched deep into my own soul I knew that it wasn’t my time for these things, for me I am not “ready”. Perhaps my best friends who have these things look at me with enormous hearts and want to experience what it is like in my patent leather Italian boots.

Are we ever really satisfied? With whom we are, where we live and our lives? How is it measurable?  When exactly is that “ahhh haaa” moment in life where you have everything; your ideal figure, house, job, car and spouse. Whatever it is you are searching for or looking for in life, it is all there. Even if we reach goals do we ever stop pushing and wanting more? I feel especially Americans are this way, we always want more, more things, more material objects, more than our neighbors or friends. Once we have “many things” what do we do with it all? And is it only me who is suffering from grass is greener on the other side?

Expecting life as it comes and living in the moment is perhaps the best cure. I am going to make a cup of tea, plug in 80’s music and appreciate everything and everyone in my life…just enjoy my last sleep in American and truly “be” where ever I am in the world.

Full of love

A quick visit to America leaves me with feelings of contentment, pleasure, love and confusion. Three weeks fly by while I catch up with family and friends. I go out every night, enjoy small pleasures in Maryland, laugh, cry, sing, dance and fall in love.  I teach my family how to make homemade pizza as we gather in the kitchen kneading the fresh dough and laughing. My grandmother shares travel and love stories with us. She is Swiss and left her country at age 19 to marry my grandfather. She said she loved him at first sight and knew she was going to marry him, she told me that you will just “know”. I feel so surrounded with love. A woman has secrets deeper than the ocean, as she talks about her first love, the man grandpa never knew about. A slow smile brought to her face that resembles my own,  remembering the French nuns at her boarding school and how they would seek out and run through the garden, past the male guards that they batted eyelashes towards and to the boy’s quarters on the other side. I laughed and said “now I know where it comes from”.

  I cheers my girlfriends at multiple bars and restaurants. We talk and share stories around the table, our deepest secrets of the year spill from our wine soaked lips. Giggles and wine we never skipped a beat. I drink to much sambuca and shots with my childhood bestest, as I pretend to not speak English in a downtown bar. Meet a man from Bari, and speak broken Italian together. I dance all night with my other best friends on New Years Eve as I teach them the word for “cheers” in Italian. We sing, dance and full belly laugh at Miss T dancing like MC hammer.

  As I leave my girlfriends when I am finished dinner and parties I venture out into the Maryland cold to my car and into his warm bed.  He is from Russia, stern, strong and everything I never wanted.

I fall faster and harder the second time around. I spend most of my nights curled up next to him whispering and laughing. He meets me at midnight on New Years Eve and we spend the night on my best friend’s cold floor. In the morning my head aches in dizzying circles as he carries my bags and thanks my girlfriend. He kisses me and tells me to follow him, we stop at the nearest coffee shop and he comes out with coffee and a large bottle of water. I giggle as he kisses my forehead as my vodka and champagne sticky hair sticks to his face. He says “Krys I will see you later, okay promise me?” I pinky promise him and clumsily get into my car.

 The next night I walk in his house with my sleepover bag and grandma’s cookies. He takes my hand and whispers “I love you”. Wide eyed and surprised I utter “What?”

“I said I love you Krysta” he says again.

 “Damn it, damn it, I yell into the receiver of my to go phone!! I love a 21 year old Russian” my best friend on the other end laughs.  “More than the Roman?” she asks A Roman and/or a Russian huumm

 "What to do? What to do?"

Maybe we are not made to have one or two great loves. Perhaps we are made to have many great loves. I am not full blown marry me tomorrow in love, but I love him. I love two men at the same time for different reasons. I love easily, giving everything I have in that moment or that day we spend together. Anywhere in the world I think that you could have many great loves in a given country…maybe the fairy tale ending is exactly that. A story, a fable with no valiantly. So I will love as much as I can this year, if it is a man, a item, friends, colors, places or countries this year all I will do is love. Love everything that comes into my life, give it love and I will get love. Full blown, full heart love…for everything and anything. Especially me.