Category Archives: Love

ENCORE (PART 3)

 

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Seth Doyle

 

This is the part of the story that is played after the record has long since finished and is still spinning on the player.

Encore

The sultry sounds of your secret melodies surprise my consciousness.

The love patterns of my thoughts pursue a passion in partnership with you.

The lack of our romantic bliss has cluttered the spaces of my thinking.

My heated desires perspire through my pores.

I drink my thoughts to quench my thirst for you.

My appetite for romance is my habitual hunger that one plus one equals two you.

My mind’s symposium pulsates to the rhythm of your heartbeat.

It feels good to stay stuck playing head-banging tunes of you nonstop and in stereo.

 

At one time or another, we will make a love song together.

Today, I play you on repeat.

Please read my other written work.

I adore you for reading my writing,

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WHY AM I SINGLE? FIVE TIPS TO COUPLEDOM FROM A SINGLE POINT OF VIEW (PART 1)

Cat looking out of mail door slit

The tune playing in my heart is called North Star. It’s a magical melody of flowers, overjoyed loved ones and “I Dos.” While I’m at odds with the big screen’s formulaic script of marriage, I am wedded to the song of romantic love. My relationship experience is limited to my fantasies of countless men fawning over my beauty, grace, and charm. It is funny how the men of my dreams are stuck in ‘La La Land,’ while I am working to unclog the way for Mr. Ty-D-Bol man.

“And I don’t know which hurt more: losing the illusion or never having had the real thing.” — Elisa Lorello

Back in the Day

I came-of-age in the 80s when Rick James’ “Super Freak” was the underground anthem I jammed to outside of the house. Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” spoke poetic tunes of a lovelessness longing “Once upon a time there was light in my life, But now there’s only love in the dark.” U2’s “With Or Without You” sang the complicated condition of couplehood and the musical band Journey affirmed to my heart “Don’t Stop Believin.”

I was a latchkey kid, washing clothes and cooking dinner in elementary school. My Mom did not get the memo that the fuse blew out on the Home Ec (Home Economics) era. I murmured repeatedly, the ‘Leave It to Beaver’ standard of gender bias household duties applied to houses and not apartments, as I pierced a triangular part of my eyeball out through my hands, to protect my sight from a maternal volcanic eruption. To my Mom, the science of domestication was proved by the redundancy of applied methods of household duties. As far as I was concerned, a statistically insignificant sample size of one was good enough for validating household chores results in a clean house. I learned firsthand from watching TV. A TV house stayed cleaned for 12 seasons after just one cleaning. Yes, I adhered to the social order of things in my Mom’s home otherwise my gluteus maximus were set aflame by the flying movement of a belt that belonged around one’s waist and not my bottom. Since then, my generational timing has been off, and my dating theology is stuck in the dark ages.

“…dating you would be like a series of unnecessary root canals interspersed with occasional makeout sessions.” — John Green

I Don’t Have a Dating Clue

It’s 2017, how do I begin dating? There is no cookie cutter preparation for the various communication scenarios that may lead to a first date. Social media dangles the carrot of the perfect partnership with seductive images of man and woman. Images are perfected to seduce the senses in this reality of fiction. The gloss and floss of a romantic life are downloaded to the cloud of my brain and stored as the aspirational faux fairy tale romance. To compound my confusion, today’s screen culture of connection has me mystified and misty-eyed. Open mic conversations are conducted with missing characters in text and form. Relationships are consumed through the looking glass of digital monitors of (e)motionless characters. The social order is follower foreplay and heart(less) exchanges. Back in the day, the physical connection between two wires of flesh and bones created the spark of reciprocity. Today, touching a screen can lead to electric static between fleshless and emotionless characters. Characteristically speaking, the different touchpoints to connect complicates the dating formula for me. This social media dating terrain is quicksand for my traditional dating ethos. It makes me uneasy and queasy at times. Despite the click-a-heart culture, I have not abandoned my goal of dating courageously and consistently this year.

“The minute I stopped trying to find the right girl, and started trying to become the right guy…the girl came.” — Jonathan Antin

Why Am I Single?

The next person that asks why I am single, I am going to exhale a spitball in their eye. In my mind, the question is like asking: “Why is it that birds can fly, but flies can’t bird?” Answer that standardized society. Because it just is. That question represents the cultural prejudice towards single individuals formed by policies and practices favoring married or ‘coupled’ people. Rest assured, I endeavor to bond in a romantic forever relationship created from openness, insight and sustained application, but until then, I am the ONE. In related news, on my smart-alecky days, I respond “I’m engaged.” Percolate on the meaning of that, standardized society.

“To say that one waits a lifetime for his soulmate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soulmates, which takes a lifetime to perfect.” — Criss Jami

The Single Life

I am unapologetically single. I enjoy my singlehood, and I relish a life of companionship. I can be both. The pervasive pop culture liter our daily conversations and psyches with garbage that the honeymoon of happiness exists on the other side of the broom. I challenge that belief. The romanticizing of married life is celebrated and admired in our culture. What I have witnessed to be true, if you are unhappy single, you are unhappy married, fo’ sure. “We” should not exist in an impoverished or disadvantaged state of love for the appearance love. That is giving love a bad name. For some, the over-attribution of their romantic relationship is their defining quality and their self-concept. This belief is, to first matter to oneself, you must matter to others. Singleness is not a sickness waiting to be cured by marriage. The dominion of love exists within. I am no self-help guru telling someone to love oneself. For my sensibilities, that is comparable to telling someone to hug yourself, you can do it, but it is hard to feel the electric current. The surest way I’ve experienced the spectrum of love is to dwell in spaces that enrich the mutuality and possibility of love in my life. For me, it is time spent with family, friends, animals and nature. These relentless relationships I create and sustain are the pathways to my personal growth in a life of love.

“Hope for love, pray for love, wish for love, dream for love…but don’t put your life on hold waiting for love.” — Mandy Hale

Five Tips to Coupledom from A Single Point of View

I’ve mastered disaster and learned from my rich collection of experiences. Here are five tips I’ve learned on my endeavor to coupledom.

  • Abandon the absolutes. Throw out the grocery list of mate traits. Otherwise, your ship may never make it to the shore – or it will sink because of the weight of your baggage claims.
  • Create space in your inner mind and your outer world to make room for new experiences and to foster change in your environment. A hot air balloon flys because the air within is lighter than the surrounding air. Release the hot air and fly, baby, fly.
  • Upgrade your prayers. Pray for an enriching journey and not the destination. Call upon a path that grows you vs. a prayer of acquisition – for example, marriage. There is no end zone in love.
  • The Hunger Games. The social media scene has created a flimsy currency of affirmation by way of hearts, followers, and technical interactions. Don’t validate or measure your self-worth by this digital currency. Be self-aware, or you will continually crave this type of validation at the peril of your self-esteem.
  • Move out the way. Participate in outdoor activities that supplement your vitamin D levels. Engage with others in co-located oxygen-filled spaces. Enjoy your singlehood.

Please read my other written work.

I adore you for reading my writing,

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My heart’s ode to the universe of love

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Mirror, mirror on the wall

Why is my prince charming coming at the speed of a crawl?

Is it due to his high cholesterol?

As I work through my muck,

I believe my fairy godmother will send me a hunk

Thank you, in advance,

For the chance to dance with romance.

Faithfully yours, Rochelle

Please read my other written work.

Until the next time – I adore you for reading my blog,

blogrochellesignature_18october2016

Find out the 5 “F”s that Make My Family’s Thanksgiving Storied Experience Very Special

Our family’s 2016 Thanksgiving celebration took place at my 88-year-old Grandmother’s tenement apartment. This is where we gathered to give thanks for our shared histories and scribe new stories on the scrolls of time. For this reason, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.

Today’s Thanksgiving Paradox

I’m adultly aware, our American history is full of paradoxes. Withstanding the fact, that the origin of the Thanksgiving holiday was not a picturesque scene of provisions, but smithereens of distorted truths amplified to absurd conclusions. This Thanksgiving mythology has been narrated for generations, harvesting untruths in our historical memories. This currency of romanticized American history, where dead white men are perfect gods, subsidizes a bankrupted belief system at the expense of cultural and individual freedoms.

Standing Rock Sioux Reservation

Our historical knowledge informed our talk about the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and the harm it will bring to the indigenous people of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.*

The talking points discussed were:

  • The environmental warfare from water contamination, and
  • The decimation of burial sites and sacred places.

My family concluded, this reckless capitalistic behavior is to aid:

  • America’s addiction to fossil fuel, and
  • To endow riches to the corporate bobble

*Newsworthy update: On 12/4/2016 the Army Corps of Engineers denied permission for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under a section of the Missouri River.

My Thanksgiving learned lessons are simple

  • Tradition is powerful.
  • History is repeated.
  • Freedom is at a cost.

The 5 “F”s that are at the heart of my family’s Thanksgiving storied experience

Family

My family experiment is varied and messy at times violates the Hollywood family formula. In our family, there is no room for cowards when it comes to loving each other wholeheartedly. I am thankful daily to practice courageous acts of love and forgiveness with my familial folk. And despite everything I know to be right about perfect love, familial love ain’t always easy.

Family forgiveness is a labor of love and a constant practice.

I flourish as an individual moving in this world because my family is the supporter of my intangibles, the hidden crevices that are invisible to the casual onlooker. My family provides a protected space for care, cover and cohesion for my human spirit.

“But obviously, this is not the love of complacency, or affection, that is, it was not drawn out by any excellency in its objects.”
As quoted from the: Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words

Faith

My family is a praying body of souls. However, my cousin who is not the church-going, bible-quoting, amen-saying, religious kind, is often the first to prompt our family tradition of praying before we eat. I am unsure if it is because she is hungry or her spirit hungers for a different kind of soul food.

Loving is an act of faith.

As we prepared for our public worship of the food, we gathered around my Grandmother’s bed which included my Grandmother’s Home Health Aide. With our heads bowed, eyes lowered, and hands held together — my Grandmother led us in prayer to give thanks for our shared lives of compassion and love.

Food

Food is the love language of my family and cooking is a heated expression of that love.

For this 2016 Thanksgiving harvest, we got: “…Beans, Greens, Potatoes, Tomatoes, Lamb, Ram, Hogs, Dogs, Beans, Greens, Potatoes, Tomatoes, Chicken, Turkeys, Rabbit. You name it”! Oh wait, that was Shirley Caesar.

Our family feast included the traditional African American dishes of slow-cooked collard greens, slow-cooked stuffing (dressing), potato salad, yams (sweet potatoes), pineapple ham, turkey breast, and cranberry-orange relish to name a few. The cranberry-orange relish dish made its table debut several years ago after my Grandmother insisted on the cylindrical rippled cranberry sauce from her past. I was against such table rubbish. I decided to master-mix an old classic to appease my taste buds and hers. Upon sampling the cranberry-orange relish, my Grandmother rubbed my culinary ego and gave the dish four stars (★★★★). One thing to know about my Grandmother, she is the Czar of food reviews. In other words, she is the human upgraded version of Yelp.com with the added feature of year-over-year comparison data to spew. As heard from my Grandmother this Thanksgiving, “Your potato salad is better this year. Last year, it was a bit dry and needed more mayo”. When you are almost 90, you have the license to say whatever you feel and think. This provision comes in the aging contract.

To everyone’s delight, Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t single digit body mass index (BMI) approved. Because in Grandmother’s house poultry and people ought to have meat on their bones. My Grandma would say to me growing up: “Girl, you better put some meat on those bones.” Nowadays, I’m working hard to do just the opposite.

Fun

When my family gets together, our communication rituals are multiple conversations swinging back and forth to a clock that has no arms. We are distracted and entertained by each other and not devices.

After dinner, we played the game Heads Up! This was my first time playing this game. My gaming behavior is a cross between a turtle, a shark, and a parrot. That is, I am slow, competitive, and redundant — I’m an all-around badass. Well actually, my Grandmother is the Original Badass (OB) of the family. My Grandmother participated in our tomfoolery responding with the correct answers to our animated clues and getting high-fives along the way. During the game, I doled out descriptions and stories for words shown on the screen instead of short clues. Since I was caught up in my head space, I would continue my rhetoric, long after the player guessed the word correctly. My cousin would repeatedly say, “Rochelle, move on.” My rebuttal, was “Y’all should have detailed the rules of the game in a .pdf form and provided a copy for my review. This way, I would know how to play the game correctly” Otherwise, I’m gonna make “ish” up, as I go.”

In my Smokey Robinson voice, “I’m the life of the party because I tell a joke or two.”

Freedom

My Grandmother has been talking a lot lately about a facet of freedom that occurs when flesh changes to an otherworldly form. This is the evolutionary agenda for our human condition. I fret over such monologues but understand the transitions and passages of the living.

I am thankful, my Grandmother is breathing life into our family story. Fortifying traditions at every turn. Rhetorically, wondering why freedom still isn’t free?

My Thanksgiving lessons are simple.

Tradition is powerful.
History is repeated.
Freedom is at a cost.

Read my other written work.

Until the next time – I adore you for reading my blog,

blogrochellesignature_18october2016

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A Different Kind of Love

I am itching for you.

We’ve been together for so long. Our intimate time is penciled on my calendar.

In preparation for this weekend’s steamy session —

I go to the drugstore to look for the product with the best slip.

Slippery when wet, is what is desired, when I brush up against you.

With great contentment, the date is here.

Our session begins with a shower.

Slowly, I wash you.

You’re soft.

I massage and coat you.

You hardened.

Fingers are used for separation.

My body bends forward like a F without a dash.

The hot sensations are hitting my mind.

Feel good moans become me.

I stand up and step aside.

The build-up is rinsed away.

Outside the shower, I stare at the mirror’s reflection.

You are no longer elongated. You have shrunken.

I am pleased.

You look good on me.

I gently towel and wrap you.

Hours later.

Intertwined. Braided together.

I fall asleep.

My hair is did.

****

Until the next time – I adore you for reading my blog,

blogrochellesignature_18october2016

He is a Lover not a fighter.

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Born in North Carolina. Nurtured in the streets of Brooklyn. That is why he looks a bit on edge. Indigo the Dog is always on the lookout. His fearlessness is a cover for the tenderness of LOVE he showers on everyone he encounters.

Here is to wishing all my readers a day filled with a love so brave you set the world a flame. Be the match to the doormat flame that ignites love in everyone you encounter. The worlds needs you to be a reflection of LOVE no matter what.

 Quotes of the day:

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and LOVE—and the greatest of these is LOVE.
1 Corinthians 13

“It is LOVE that will save our world and our civilization.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Action of the Day:

Ask those you LOVE “How can I love you more?”

I love you. Your existence is connected to mine. Thank you for reading my blog,

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