Tuesday, January 23, 2018

That Perfect Musical

I've seen plenty of musicals live in the many years I've had season tickets to the Dallas Theater Center.  My all time favorite live one was Cabaret.  Lord, it was darkly incredible.  Oh, and I also saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  Though I must admit I liked the film better, the live show was also such fun.

Hm... this is maybe harder than I thought... there are more musicals I have really loved than I realized when I set out to type this.  No matter.  The inspiration will become clear as I write.

I recently saw the film The Greatest Showman, which is based on the life of P.T. Barnum and the birth of the circus.  Anyone who knows anything about me at all knows I have a penchant for cirque.  Always have.  Though playful in my youth going to the circus with my grandmother, and ever impressed with the elephants who always stole the show, it took a dark turn for me in my own artwork in college and after.

I found myself surprisingly moved during The Greatest Showman.  Certain scenes took my breath away, though I have to say the bearded lady seemed a little overdone (imho... it's my blog, I can say what I want).  And the lyrics to the songs are incredible and lift up something inside of me.  It also reminded me of what life might have been like if I'd stayed the course being an artist full-time.  If I'd created that traveling puppet show I'd dreamed of long ago.  Or some other dark, slightly twisted version of something along those lines.  That girl-artist still thrives inside this broken body with a mane for hair and the lawyer brain.  And I will always root for the oddities, the dreamers, the dancers, the ones with brutiful stories under their drive to shine for a moment with the flashing lights and colors.  Because I am one at heart, too.

What I did not expect was how my little girl who absorbed my very spirit in the womb would take to The Greatest Showman.  I have already cried multiple times watching her expressive improvisational dancing to the music from the film, which makes me love it all the more.  Her dancing embodies how the film and its music made me feel - my inner world presented to me in a dramatic and precious miniature me (and yet not me) before my very eyes.  She is destined for greatness based solely on the musical lifeblood flowing through her.  And this film brings it all out in her in shining glory.  So even though I have loved some other musicals, this one got personal, in an utterly magical way.

(Please let this video work... iMovie is giving me fits....)









Thursday, January 18, 2018

That Perfect Melancholy Cranberry

I can't believe Delores O'Riordan, the lead singer of the Cranberries, has died at the age of 46.  I've felt so sad about this and have been wanting to sit down and write this since Monday when I heard the news, but it's been a shit show of a week, so I haven't had a moment until just now. 

I remember when my girlfriends and I, during my Senior year of high school in 1993, drew names for a Christmas present exchange, and my dear friend, Mittie, gifted to me the Cranberries, Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can't We? audio cassette tape. 

I adored that tape.  Played the hell out of it.  Still know every word.  And every other Cranberries album I came to own in the years following.  When I was in college, I cannot count how many hours on end I spent driving my old Blazer on wide Texas highways singing along with Delores...  And crying sometimes.  And filled with angst at others.  And feeling beautiful at still others.  Singing all the while.  Her voice is embedded in my psyche, imprinted on my heart. 

When the new Cranberries acoustic album came out in 2017, it felt so personal.  So immediate.  So perfect.  Who knew then that it would be the final manifestation of the rebirth of their music?

I had dreamy plans to hire the Cranberries to play for me one day, I was that moved by the new album.  And that particular dream is, sadly, now only a dream with Delores gone.  But here's the thing that makes that okay.  I know the lives of others don't revolve around me.  I know that.  But I cannot help but be so grateful in knowing that her time here, on this Earth, at the same time as me, was supposed to be part of and influence my life in a deeply moving way.  I feel lucky to have received so fully her beautiful music that stirred me completely; it's like the clouds parted when I heard those old songs reworked again in the newest album.  It wasn't made for me, but it also was, if you know what I mean.  For us, actually.  Not just me.  It was a true gift.  I am able to appreciate the rebirth of that music before her death and see it as a reconnection, an homage, and a perfect ode to the beauty the Cranberries gave the world.  So, I'm grateful for the reminder.  And my obsessive nature pretty much ensures I'll keep playing Cranberries over and over and over and over... absorbing it more fully each and every time.  


So thank you, thank you, thank you Delores, for all your delicious melodies and dreams through the years, and especially most recently.  I've been faithfully listening to your voice every time I turn on music since Monday.  I'll be dreaming my dreams with you. 



(Also, here's a not great, but also awesome faded black & white photo... it's of Delores O'Riordan's house in the Irish countryside that I took from the window of a bus in Ireland circa 1998 when the bus driver pointed out that it was hers.  Slainte, dear Delores, even if only in spirit.)

 

Sunday, January 14, 2018

That Perfect Clandestine Deep Ocean

"'What do I do now?'  I asked her.
'Now,' she said, 'you step into the bucket.  You don't have to take your shoes off or anything.  Just step in.'
It did not even seem like a strange request.  She let go of one of my hands, kept hold of the other.  I thought, I will never let go of your hand, not unless you tell me to.  I put one foot into the glimmering water of the bucket, raising the water level almost to the edge.  My foot rested on the tin floor of the bucket.  The water was cool on my foot, not cold.  I put the other foot into the water and I went down with it, down like a marble statue, and the waves of Lettie Hempstock's ocean closed over my head.

...

I was holding my breath.  I held it until I could hold it no longer, and then I let the air out in a bubbling rush and gulped a breath in, expecting to choke, to splutter, to die.
I did not choke.  I felt the coldness of the water--if it was water--pour into my nose and my throat, felt it in my lungs, but that was all it did.  It did not hurt me.
I thought, This is the kind of water you can breathe.  I thought, Perhaps there is just a secret to breathing water, something simple that everyone could do, if only they knew.  That was what I thought.
That was the first thing I thought.
The second thing I thought was that I knew everything.  Lettie Hempstock's ocean flowed inside me, and it filled the entire universe from Egg to Rose.  I knew that.  I knew what Egg was--where the universe began, to the sound of uncreated voices singing in the void--and I knew where Rose was--the peculiar crinkling of space on space into dimensions that fold like origami and blossom like strange orchids, and which would mark the last good time before the eventual end of everything and the next Big Bang, which would be, I knew now, nothing of the kind."

Those words aren't mine.  They are Neil Gaiman's, excerpted from The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  They encapsulate the feeling with which I'm left after finally reading this book.  I bought it--signed by Neil himself--at a reading he performed and talk he gave at the magnificent Majestic Theater in Dallas a few years ago.  Somehow I'd forgotten to read it then.  But then I noticed it on my bookshelf recently and was moved to read it now.


Drinking deep.  Drinking so deep he's filled with Lettie Hempstock's ocean.  And he needs saving, not dissimilar from Charles in A Wrinkle in Time needing to be saved from the IT.  And as the battle with the hunger birds ensues after he and Lettie exit her ocean, she indeed saves him, and then he hears someone humming a tune "from a long way away," and it's an old nursery rhyme: Girls and Boys Come Out to Play.

"...the moon doth shine as bright as day.
Leave your supper and leave your meat, 
and join your playfellows in the street.
Come with a whoop and come with a call.
Come with a whole heart or not at all."

And that nursery rhyme is one I know, too.  Sort of.  It turns out that it's clearly the inspiration for, and loosely smooshed together with, Wee Willie Winkie (the reference to which I only discovered as I was reading from a children's book my daughter has), in a song called Babylon by an old band called Clandestine that I used to go see play in Austin years ago when I lived there.  It makes me wonder how many other nursery rhymes are conglomerated into this dear song.  I've found two references now in this one song that's always made my heart sing.  Maybe I'll come across other references as time marches on.  In the meantime, I'm loving the ongoing serendipitous connection.  The Wee Willie Winkie reference is in the fifth stanza, and the Girls and Boys Come Out to Play reference is in the eighth stanza.  And astonishingly, and unwittingly, the sixth stanza pretty much sums up this part of Ocean quite nicely.  Babylon was released by Clandestine years before the Ocean book, and I'd be shocked if Neil ever heard the song, but I suppose one never knows. 

As soon as I finished reading Neil's Ocean yesterday, I went and listened to Babylon, singing quietly along, every word by heart, and all the while connecting the dots and juxtaposing the two, drinking in the metaphors.  Filled up with my own deep ocean.

Here are the lyrics... it's hard to find a version of the song to listen to online, of course, if you don't already have it at your fingertips like I do, but it's worth the effort....

"How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
- Yes, and back again.
How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.


Down on the carpet, you shall kneel,
While the green grass grows at your feet.
Stand up straight, and choose the one you love,
And choose the one you love.


If wishes were horses and beggars could ride,
I'd be over the sea with you at my side.
But if "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans
There'd be no work for a traveller.


How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
- Yes, and back again.
How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.


Up all night, and running through the town -
Upstairs and downstairs, in my nightgown.
Peering through the windows,
And crying through the locks,
"Oh, where is my sweetheart, it's eight o'clock!"


Lavender green, lavender blue
If you love me, I will love you.
I'd skip over ocean and dance over sea,
All the birds in the world can't catch me!


How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
- Yes, and back again.
How many miles to Babylon?
- Threescore and ten.


Come out with me, and come out to play -
The moon, it shines as bright as day.
Oh, leave your supper, and leave your sleep;
Come down with your friends now,
Here in the street."


"Babylon"
by Clandestine




Wednesday, January 10, 2018

That Perfect Wrinkle in Time

Reading out loud to someone is such an act of love.  I adore it.  I have read to my children since they were wee babies.  I used to read prose and poetry in speech competitions in high school, which is really a form of dramatic reading up in front of judges and a crowd, and I used to be good at it; won prizes for it.  There's something about having someone hang on your words, as you breathe and speak life and heart into letters formed into words, formed into sentences, formed into deep meaning, all just printed on a page.  It's such a gift to be able to give.  These days, I am almost always on the giving end of reading, when I read to my children in the evening-time or to their classes at school, but the times when someone has taken the time to read books out loud to me... it's pure magic.  Absorbing a story through the voice of a loved one is truly a wonder.  I sometimes dream I'm being read to.  Clearly something deep in my psyche needs that. 

Tonight I finished reading out loud the last two chapters of A Wrinkle in Time to my son.  We've been reading the book a chapter or two at a time for a while now.  Not every day, but pretty consistently.  The only other time I have ever read A Wrinkle in Time, I didn't read it myself at all.  My third grade gifted and talented teacher, Mrs. Maxwell, read it to our class.  I remember loving it as she read it.  Hanging on her words, spoken to us, seated in a circle around her, in her gentle voice.  When I was home in Louisiana for this past Thanksgiving, I ran into her in the Kroger parking lot (I cannot go to Kroger in my hometown without seeing folks I know... ever).  Mrs. Maxwell somehow hadn't aged and still looked exactly as I'd remembered her, and it was this happy run in with Mrs. Maxwell that inspired me to read this book to my kids now.  My daughter wasn't interested in it, and she fell asleep every time we tried to include her, so it became something just Max and I shared after the first couple of chapters or so. 

*I certainly don't want to spoil the story for you if you've not yet read it, but there will be some spoilers in here.  Can't be helped.  So, you've been warned.  I wish you had a Mrs. Maxwell or a me to read the whole book out loud to you, because it's divine read that way, but go read it on your own.  Or out loud to your own child.  Or someone else's child.  Or come and read to me.  I'd happily take another turn listening.  Anyway... on to a few points from the book that moved me to write this.  That's where I was headed.*

I'm not going to recount the whole story here, but the gist you need to understand is the battle the characters have with IT... the Dark Thing... the thing that makes everyone it infects alike, rhythmic, makes them take the easy path... makes them give in to what isn't intrinsically them ("How am I not myself?" -- I Heart Huckabees). 

After the IT had held Meg's father captive for many Earth years, and Meg and her friend had rescued him at long last, he explained:

"Yes.  Nothing seemed important any more but rest, and of course IT offered me complete rest.  I had almost come to the conclusion that I was wrong to fight, that IT was right after all, and everything I believed in most passionately was nothing but a madman's dream.  But then you and Meg came in to me, broke through my prison, and hope and faith returned."

*And speaking of this same kind of real, true life passion, I recently wrote down a quote from my boss at work one day who said something along these lines... not quite as poetically, but still:  "Without obsession, there is no passion, and that's not a life worth living."  This sentiment keeps recurring.... Living passionately is not a madman's dream.  It's the very point of living.*

And now I'm going to, at my whim, chop and ellipses the hell out of passages from tonight's reading where Meg must save her little brother, too, from the IT... my strange run-on quotations may be a little of a jumble, but try to absorb what's there so I can give you the flow of the feeling embedded there:

"'Don't worry about your little brother.'  The tentacles' musical words were soft against her. 'We would never leave him behind the shadow.  But for now, you must relax, you must be happy, you must get well.'  The gentle words, the feeling that this beast would be able to love her no matter what she said or did, lapped Meg in warmth and peace. . . .  'You must eat slowly and quietly.  I know that you are half starved, that you have been without food far too long, but you must not rush things or you will not get well.'  Something completely and indescribably and incredibly delicious was put to Meg's lips, and she swallowed gratefully. . . .  Time no longer had any meaning. . . . 'Please sing to me, Aunt Beast. . . .'  It would be impossible to describe sight to Aunt Beast, it would be even more impossible to describe the singing of Aunt Beast to a human being.  It was a music even more glorious than the music of the singing creatures on Uriel.  It was a music more tangible than form or sight.  It had essence and structure.  It supported Meg more firmly than the arms of Aunt Beast.  It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real. . . .  'What can I tell you that will mean anything to you?  Good helps us, the stars helps us, perhaps what you would call light helps us, love helps us.  Oh, my child, I cannot explain!  This is something you just have to know or not know. . . .'  'Kindly pay me the courtesy of listening to me. . . [a sonnet] is a very strict form of poetry, is it not?  [And w]ithin this strict form [of a sonnet] the poet has complete freedom to say whatever he wants, doesn't he?. . .'  'You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet?  A strict form, but freedom within it?'  'Yes.' Mrs. Whatsit said.  'You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.  What you say is completely up to you.'"

And when Meg realizes she is the one who has to go and save her tiny genius little brother from the despondent, cold, conforming force of IT, struggling with all her might through her terror of confronting the Dark Thing to get there, her guides, Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which all gently lead her by her thoughts to help her realize she has something the IT doesn't have that will help her beat it, help her get Charles back.  Meg's heart pounds in her chest as she visualizes the pulsating brain on the dais that is the IT as she approaches it with slow steps, relying on pure faith that she will succeed, still wondering what thing it is that she has that IT doesn't... 

*And it is here that my son interrupted the story and shouted excitedly in a eureka of a moment: "HEART!  Meg has a heart!  IT is just a brain.  It has no heart.  That's why Meg will win!  She will use love power."* 

I don't think I have to tell you how the story ends.  But I will:  it, indeed, ends with love.  If I have been able to teach Max by my loving example through the years to recognize with such purity and excitement that it is the heart that wins before it's even obvious in the story, I swear I can do anything. 


Saturday, January 6, 2018

That Perfect Sensational Place in Dallas

I tried something completely new today.  When I started this blog, I intended to write about fun and interesting things.  Maybe even sometimes things to do or must see things in Dallas.  Occasionally, I'd dive into a memory of something or veer inward, but mostly my posts were outward facing.  See, I started this blog because I was trying to occupy myself with creating and focusing on positive... er, perfect... things when I desperately needed positivity in my life.  But then things got even harder (as they do), and I had lots of surgeries and other hard things that turned me very inward.  And lots of introspective postings have come pouring out of me.  More of those to come, I'm sure.  But not today.
 
Today's post is more akin to the ones that started this whole thing... well, at least kind of.  Today's post is physical.  Sensational.  Oh that's a good word for this.  It's about something purely sensory and sensational.  I actually DO have a place.. ahem, and experience... to recommend.   

I am a junkie for massages.  I cannot understand how any human doesn't want/crave/need massages on a regular basis.  I mean.  Really.  I started getting massages regularly, and out of necessity, when I started having my joints fail me.  It started with my left shoulder in 2009.  I first went to a chiropractor, who also did massage, and only did that a few times as it didn't seem to help much.  Plus the guy sorta creeped me out.  So then I switched to non-chiropractic massage.  I've tried all sorts.  Had memberships at massage places.  Visited spas.  Had medical massage and acupuncture.  During some times on my broken-body journey, I've gone for massages as frequently as weekly.  Other times, I had forced dry spells because my broken parts were too fragile to take it.  Nowadays, I go every two to three weeks for maintenance.  By that point, my muscles are often at their breaking point, and they need some deep release.  Hypermobile joints make muscles work too hard.  Plus Life on top of that.  And I'm still not physically right... maybe never will be... but massages help me be and do the most I can with this vessel I've got.  My current masseuse is really a physical therapist/masseuse.  It's a fully clothed experience, with deep pressure, working out all the nasty knots and hot spots.  And sometimes hurts, in that necessary way.  I first went to him on a prescription from my shoulder surgeon (the good one).  He knows all the names and locations of all the muscles and explains why the pains in my body show up the way they do.  He helps me feel better physically and helps me understand this damn bodily pain that persists.  I'm not complaining.  Really.  I'm about to get to the point of this post.  But I do rely on those massages as much as I rely on water to drink.

I had a physical therapy massage yesterday.  That was necessary.  And helpful.  And all the good things.  But it wasn't new or sensational.

Today.  That was new.  And sensational.

I went to King Spa in Dallas today with a close girlfriend of mine.  King Spa is a traditional Korean spa, known in Korea as a Jjim-Jil Bang.  My friend frequents King Spa and has been many many times over the past however many years it's been since it opened.  This was my first time.  I'm going to attempt to recount what happened chronologically because I'm still sort of in blissful shock. 

First, my friend picked me up and we drove far north, almost to Farmer's Branch, to King Spa.  She paid for us to get in with a Groupon, and the difference we paid as an entry fee was a meager $7.  They gave us wristbands with keys and "gym suits" and sent us on our way.  We walked from there into the locker room, and we were immediately confronted by a nude woman bending over.  I scanned the room and saw that it was, indeed, an entirely nude locker room.  Women just strolling around.  Paying for spa services.  Drying off.  What have you.  All nude.  A few in gym suits.  I've been in many locker rooms at gyms and spas.  Many.  Most women's locker rooms have folks changing clothes, of course, but usually they're more modest.  This was loungey-er.  More casual.  More intentional.  Different. 

My friend and I found our lockers and changed into our gym suits, and then she gave me a tour of the massive facility.  (Let me stop here to explain that the entire place is NOT a nude spa.  There are plenty of co-ed parts where people wear the gym suits.  Or bathing suits if it's the co-ed pool area.  And, by the way, the gym suits are unflattering baggy shorts and t-shirts.  Nothing fancy or glamorous about them.)  We toured everything... the pool area, restaurant area, a sea of recliners, a movie theater, the very many sauna options (hot and cold varieties, each with themes), and also the bar area overlooking the pool.  It was almost like Disney World.  But without Mickey.  And I wouldn't take my kids (though some people do... I saw some).

I warned my friend that she was giving this lovely tour of this massive place to her most directionally-challenged friend (I seriously have no sense of direction...) and that I'd probably still have questions and lose my way through the maze of distracting places, especially as I kept finding myself focused on bizarre murals and other decor choices.  More about those later as we go.

Next, we returned to the locker room.  And it was a When In Rome experience.  After having two babies and seven orthopedic surgeries in the past decade, I've lost any bashfulness I may have ever had about my body.  Though in all honesty, I've never really been that shy.  And I also took twelve semester hours of life drawing (nudes) in art school, which translates to eight hours a week for two years, which also helped me appreciate the human form in a non-sexualized but aesthetically pure way.  And, indeed, though it all sounds weird writing it down (I almost didn't even write this blog post because I recognize this all sounds bizarre-o to us 'Mericans), it became normalized pretty quickly.  I guess that's what happens when you're surrounded by folks all doing the same thing unabashedly.  It's easy to just go along with the flow.

Just off of the locker room behind glass doors and stacks of orange hand towel-sized towels, there was a large, very wet room with rows of showers and bathing areas lining the walls and four "baths" -- three in the center and one at the back of the room.  Three of them were varying degrees of hot (large bubbly hot tubs), and one was cold where women would occasionally plunge for a short time.  I stuck with the hot water, though my friend braved the cold one more than once.  And one girl dived into it, though a sign said no diving.  There were lots of signs telling people what to do and not to do everywhere... so many that even this lawyer was overwhelmed and didn't read them all.  Except the one that said something like "Avoid the Toads," which were hot water faucets shaped like toads spitting scalding water into the hot baths.  So we blissfully soaked nude in the hot tubs with whatever random women happened to be there with us at from time to time until we were getting pruney.  I could even pretty much float on my back in there, like I love to do in swimming pools, it was so roomy.  I loved the weightlessness in the bubbly hot tub.  (I so need to buy a hot tub... that will be another blog post some other time.)  Again, it sounds kinda crazy, but really it was relaxing and peaceful despite the naked strangers everywhere.  Most of the ceiling had these large circular dimple shapes, and I kept finding myself tracing over them with my eyes as I relaxed into the hot water.  And my eyes liked focusing on them better than the back-lit, slightly faded, Venus de Milo staring down at us from the center of the ceiling.  And I wondered if the shiny circular air vents here and there among the circular shapes in the ceiling were really cameras.  Then I decided they better not be and convinced myself to stop thinking about it.

Then I heard about this magical thing called an Aroma Ceremony Scrub.

This.  Is.  Something.  I.  Never.  Imagined.

Essentially, there are these plastic coated pink massage tables lined up in a row (maybe ten or so) behind a 3/4 high marble wall with Simpsons themed glass work above the walls (kinda like the glass partitions between booths at restaurants... but why Simpsons (like Homer and Bart Simpson... really), I have no idea, and I wouldn't have even noticed the Simpsons theme if my friend hadn't pointed it out... it was that subtle), with deep barrels of hot water being filled and refilled between the tables.  And each table had assigned to it a Korean woman whose job it is to bathe, scrub, and massage the women who sign up for the Aroma Ceremony Scrub.  You can choose to get only a scrub or only a massage, but I don't know why in the world anyone would choose only one when you can sign up for the whole shebang.  I expect many people reading this have had professional massages at some point.  And those are typically nude.  With tactfully draped covers.  They're not like this.  They're modest and dark.  This is not that.  But it's also not weird somehow.  Getting scrubbed and bathed by these skillful women was a treat I had no way to expect would be so professional and so relaxing.  The deep respect they had for cleansing and treating the body well was deeply apparent and like no other experience I've had.  A few times, I thought to myself, is this legal?  I also thought to myself about various people I knew, wondering if they would ever find themselves in the situation in which I found myself.  And then I wondered how these women came to choose this as their profession.  And then I thought about how most Americans are prudish -- we're taught to be that way by so many societal norms and pressures.  But most other cultures aren't.  Silly Americans.  But mostly, I drifted off into blissful relaxation.  I won't go into detail about the treatment (this ain't that kind of blog), but I suppose it's pretty much what you would expect an Aroma Ceremony Scrub would be in a place like this.  Except it's 90 minutes.  Nintey.  And they wash your hair.  And douse you with giant buckets of hot water that feel like ocean waves throughout everything.  And it's a hundred times more incredible and calming than you can imagine.  Actually, there's no way I could have imagined this experience ahead of time, so that measure is probably way off.  And here's the kicker, when you finish, they give you a card for another free entry.  They create lots and lots of addicts that way, I'm sure.  From the other women I saw in there getting massages and scrubs, I can say they certainly aren't hurting for customers. 

My friend didn't do the Aroma Ceremony Scrub today as she opted for a regular (dry) massage instead, though she described to me the time she did do the Aroma Ceremony Scrub as "epic."  That's pretty fitting.

When I finished up and changed back into my lovely gym suit, I met my friend for lunch in the restaurant.  We both felt happily woozy after our treatments - she described it as feeling high.  I think we needed to eat by that point, too, and we were uber relaxed.  Good thing I had no important decisions to make right then (which is a break from the norm... and a welcome one).  I had beef and egg ramen, and she had this bright red super spicy chicken soup.  We sat in the most delightful majestic little chairs with pink leather cushioned seats and white ornate woodwork with gold detail on the backs as we slurped up the goodness.  But the chopsticks were smooth metal which did not work with my slippery noodles, and I felt like an idiot using them, so I switched to a fork and spoon, a little let down with my skills, to be honest.  But it was delicious.  And we chugged water.  Lots of it.  And my friend pointed out the bizarre mural in the restaurant area, which I hadn't noticed because I'd been too focused on the wall-sized menu of all sorts of goodies.  And I noticed a weird wall with pumpkin decor near the Sphinx room across the way.  And the menu showed that they had shaved ice that I'm gonna definitely have to try next time. 

We then headed to all the crazy saunas in our pretty gym suits... one had a pyramid theme, with a sphinx outside, which was lovely, but kinda too hot pretty quickly.  One had giant amethyst geodes everywhere.  We tried a few others, and the themes of them are kind of running together in my mind, but they all had varying levels of heat and kiln-like quality, and varying murals or other wall treatments.  In some we sat, and in some we had to lie on the floor -- sometimes on mats, sometimes on large bamboo coverings.  I wondered if my metal cane would get hot to the touch sitting in the saunas, but somehow it didn't.  And then we went in the cold room, where we could see our breath (but I couldn't blow smoke rings, but for some reason I tried), but we didn't stay in there too long.  And then we spent quite a while in the oxygen room, where we laid on mats on the floor, this time with head cushions, apparently breathing in extra oxygen, which seems like it can't be a bad idea.  We only heard one man snoring in one of the saunas, which is surprising given how relaxed every single body in that place seemed.  But we definitely saw lots of people passed out asleep on the recliners and couches in the open areas (good for them).

When we'd had our fill of laying in saunas that felt like lying on a warm sandy beach but without all the sand, we headed back to the locker room for one last soak in the hot tubs and a rinse off in the showers.

All of this took about five hours.  For the Aroma Ceremony Scrub and my ramen, at the end I paid a grand total of about $129.00.  It may be the most well spent $129.00 I've paid in quite some time.  Good thing they gave us free entry return vouchers.  And thank goodness for friends who are comfortable enough with themselves and their friends to introduce them to such a bizarre and sensational place.

*You know you totally want to see this place.  http://www.kingspa.com/dallas/facilities.html  There's even a picture of the toads you're not supposed to touch on that page.  And here's D Magazine's description:  https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2014/march/spa-wars-korea-vs-russia/ (Note, even D Magazine recommends the Aroma Ceremony Scrub.)

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

That Perfect Profound and Profane

I was just home visiting for the holidays, and one morning, as we were chatting in our pajamas in the dining room, while I sipped coffee and my Dad organized his pressed pennies, he brought up a song he wanted to play for me.  Little did he know it's a song I already knew, but in a version by a different artist.  The song was Hallelujah.  His version was one on violin by Lindsey Stirling.  My version was by Jeff Buckley.  We listened to each other's versions on YouTube.  And then we talked a little about Leonard Cohen, who originally wrote the song.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much my Dad knew about Leonard Cohen.  But then also not surprised. 

But my favorite thing about this conversation and this moment of sharing music was my Dad's observations about the lyrics to Hallelujah.  "Profound and profane," he said.  The combination of those words resonated and echoed, bumping back and forth through the grey matter between my ears, and then settled and nestled down somewhere deep in my heart.  That. 

Webster's defines "profound" as:

1 a : having intellectual depth and insight
   b : difficult to fathom or understand
2 a : extending far below the surface
   b : coming from, reaching to, or situated at a depth : deep-seated
3 a : characterized by intensity of feeling or quality
   b : all encompassing : complete
 
And "profane" as:
 
1 : to treat (something sacred) with abuse, irreverence, or contempt desecrate
2 : to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use 
 
I told him I think all the most beautiful, most human things in the world have an element of both.  And as I sit here now, I know that the coupling of those two words speaks a truth about what is so moving about that song, and about all sorts of art, music, places, and people I sincerely adore and expresses a notion that is so often hard to put my fingers on.  But it's magnificent.  And I'm so pleased to have the words for it now.