The Water of Love

What is it in the printed word especially the hand written script that brings the water of love to our eyes? In the 21^st Century freehand letters are a lost art. When I get such in the mail I immediately know it’s personal and most times it’s about love. Today was such a day and I got a double dose of it and it hit me like an arrow. My love is alive. 

When words of love reach my eyes the waterworks begin and it takes all my male restraint to keep from crying like a baby. Women love it when strong men cry it shows their vulnerable side. It shows that their man is in touch with his feminine psyche. It’s fashionable these days too. No need to feel we’ve lost face when our cheeks flush and our eyes fill with the water of love.

We men can take a page from the women in our lives and enjoy the full range of human emotion from the agony to the ecstasy. The water of love dissolves the pain of holding back what we truly feel. The water of love refreshes our spirit and strengthens our resolve to live one day at a time. 

King of Hearts

Who is this man the man I call the King of Hearts?  He came out of the blue. I knew of him but I never expected to befriend the brother of someone that I love and respect professionally so much. I need to digress a moment before I continue and talk about this “gentle” man. His sister, Kristen James and I are not “buddies” but we do have a mutual regard for each other. We travel in different circles but we both have a passion for exercise and fitness even though her diet of salmon and three bowls of steam is hardly my cup of tea. Kidding aside she has inspired and continues to inspire me every day in my writings no matter what my topic is. You might be surprised that her Zen like philosophy has driven my afflatus in my favorite blog: My Life After AA.  I will never forget that day she said “yes” when I asked if I could blog about her just about 4 years ago. It has been a fun journey writing nearly 800 entries about her and her very talented staff. I hope she knows how thankful I am to have had the opportunity to grow what comes natural to me.  

  And now to the man I write about tonight his name Cameron Bean. When I took my first class with Kristen Finello another one of KJ’s protégés I knew before that first class was over that she was a special talent and I have waxed on about her in several issues of KSC and since I always nickname those I love and care about I have dubbed her K2, which seems apropos on many levels. When I found out that her beau was Cameron Bean I thought how wonderful that the Evil Woman could play cupid as well. She must have been omniscient because this young couple seems perfectly suited in a yin yang sort of way. The love between them leaps at you. You see it in her brilliant smile and in his soft features when he looks at her. The fact that they chose to bring me in as their friend surprised me. What interest would two young people have in someone old enough to be their father?  At first I thought it was just in some avuncular capacity but the fact that we communicate almost daily makes me feel apart of these two vibrantly beautiful people. 

Meeting Cameron was how can I say it? Easy! He instantly makes you feel comfortable in his presence. He is a hulk of a man who is soft-spoken and not very loquacious but when he does speak you know he means what he says. There’s no throw away dialogue with Cameron and it almost seems anachronistic that a man of his size can be as sensitive as he genuinely is. He is probably one of the kindest men I have ever met. It’s not easy for 21st Century man to man up and also be the King of Hearts.  

Cameron recently negotiated rather remarkably a procedure that might have had many men sidelined for quite a spell but his miraculous recovery was truly remarkable. I think he has an indomitable spirit and Cameron makes me wish I knew his Dad who must be beaming over his son from heaven. And now maybe he’s found true happiness in the arms of a beautiful lithesome blonde with a sparkling smile. 

I feel lucky to be their friend and look forward to every time I am in their presence.  

Ask....

I asked the Universal Mind if it was all right if it blessed me with some new topics and a new approach to my writing. Ask and you will receive my Catholic Doctrine told me as a young boy. Other parables claimed that you may not get what you want but instead just what you need. The latter I have faith in implicitly. The wants are always a question because I think the reason that’s true is that we are simply not ready to receive. I do know also that what you see is what will appear. God does not take us this far to drop us on our heads. We get what we can handle.  

If you see pain and suffering your brain will manifest them. If you seek a bountiful life and give back before getting both material and spiritual riches will be laid at your feet. I love this premise and I pray that my Higher Power guides me thoroughly through this 2014.   

Kissing Ass?

I have been chastised about going on and on about that gym I belong to Equinox and the members in it. Some say that I am just kissing ass. Maybe I am but that’s not my intention. I do it because I like to make people feel good and if that’s kissing ass than so be it. Writing about people makes me feel good too and some of my critics tell me I have no one to talk to so that is why I write about members at the club. There’s an element of truth to that because for all my gregariousness I am a free spirit, a lone wolf and a solitary man. I have never let anyone get close to me ever since the death of my sister Carol in 1969. Her passing left me confounded in the handling of any relationship.  I am however trying to change that little by slowly. This year in particular some of my friends have invited me to breakfast and dinner and into their homes so I must be changing. In the past I would have declined but now I don’t like to say no because it just makes me feel like I belong.

I used to take pride in the fact that most people didn’t “get me” but now as I let my defenses down and become less obscure I am attracting more humans into my life. God has blessed me with charisma but also with the chains of being enigmatic. That albatross kept me from getting close with my non-romantic relationships. And with a little help from Hercules I am bustin’ loose link by link. 

One Degree of Separation

We all have heard the theory of 6 degrees of separation. It postulates that we are just a few steps away from any person in the world in terms of introduction. I thought how about just 1 degree. One degree of separation between a man and a woman is the one-degree that separates them from a romantic one, sex.  Without sex we are free to love the opposite gender in a very unique way in which there is no agenda. Just think we can have an emotional connection that will probably be more enduring than one that is sexual in nature.  

I will avoid any conjecture as to why sex seems to be the one degree that albeit the most physically and emotionally satisfying of God’s gifts can also be the biggest heart breaker too. But consider a relationship that doesn’t involve the complications sex does and you have the makings of a relationship that can flourish in many ways. The woman in the case of a man can give insights he could never understand and when she says one thing and really means the opposite it’s your female counterpart that can provide you just the solace you need. She can give him an inside take as to why “she” is acting the way she is. On the opposite end what woman wouldn’t love to have a man in her life to help and guide her as to how to handle the confounding behavior patterns of the man in her life. Tell her if this guy is a player or if he’s really serious.  

I’ve been blessed to have a few of these in my adult life and when I speak of 1 degree of separation those relationships help carry me into my life where that separation disappears.  

It's A Man Thing

I’ve heard this so many times it almost makes me throw up in my mouth. However with every cliché there is a grain of truth somewhere. Take emotions for example. Women maybe because of hormones (I don’t profess to know why) can identify every human emotion like we can name every player on our favorite baseball team. I could be accused of prejudice but let’s face it men don’t know squat when it comes to why we’re feeling like crap. We can form a hypothesis surely but as to really what it is that’s bugging us well we’d be more likely to know the ingredients of Quiche Lorraine than what emotion we are feeling. 

One day some years ago I had in a glimpse of what it must be like to be a woman with full cognitive ability. I found myself being angry, afraid and resentful all at once. It was an epiphany of sorts but those moments of clarity rarely present themselves even today. I am relegated to asking my big brain (as opposed to the little one) what’s wrong Jack? What is it that you need attending to? Most times it’s just free floating anxiety made up entirely in my head. I listen to my heart and if I can put my ego aside and listen it’s usually nothing. When it’s a combination of things not just one thing I attend to what I can, accept the changes that are beyond my reach in time or space and when I breathe deep I can distinguish between the two. Often the Serenity Prayer in rapid fire does the trick.  

It’s a man thing however just as we learned to lace our shoes we can do what women do and that is to be a sentient human being even though we are stuck with testosterone. By the way I wouldn’t have it any other way but well it’s a man thing by golly.  

EQ Fit Charlotte Ricci

As to the how and why’s I wound up taking my EQ fit test at 530 pm on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I will not share with you. However suffice it to say that this little experience told me what I already knew but have chosen to completely ignore. I suffer from pretending ignorance that just because I spin like a madman 6 days a week I am exempt from good nutrition. Wrong! 

A young woman with chutzpah approached me about 10 days before and asked me to write about her and in return she would give me a complimentary EQ fit test. At first I was reluctant to say yes for a number of reasons. One was I thought I am above such nonsense, two I like to write as a friend has suggested “organically” as opposed to being asked but somehow an inner voice said: Do it!  And truth be told I have been asked to write so that last reason was hardly one I could cling to. And 3rd I was worried suppose I was unimpressed and had to manufacture a story? Fortunately none of my reasons held water because Charlotte Ricci is an intelligent, passion driven professional eager to make her mark in Woodbury and it was I who benefited most from our “barter” arrangement. 

The young Ms. Ricci I thought was way too inexperienced for this kind of work but her psychology undergrad degree told me otherwise. Her questions were probing but not too personal. I liked that and as a matter of fact her charisma made the queries seem natural. I have always been able to spot a “scripted” pitch whenever I was being sold something but this diminutive dynamo had a silky smooth timber and I dutifully blurted out my obscene dietary regimen. Once I spoke it the gravity hit me like a hammer to the head.  I haven’t been to confession in quite a long time but Charlotte listened intently as I recited my venial and mortal sins one by one. When anyone can get me to open up like that I know their talent is innate. So here’s what transpired. 

I don’t drink enough water despite my best intention. I eat way too many sweets, carbohydrates and late night snacks. The one thing in the last 6 months that has changed is that my lunch over at Fairway has me ingesting fairly healthy portions of vegetables and fruits at least 4 times a week. But this is just not enough and as Charlotte took out her calipers and started pinching at critical spots on my anatomy I realized that I have a long way to go in reducing my body fat and increasing my upper body muscle tone. 

As we proceeded upstairs Charlotte using her various tools was able to determine just how inflexible I was and spotted just from my gait how tight my hips were. She gave me some great stretch techniques and urged me to continue with my dating of the Styrofoam roller and make it part of my everyday routine. I tried it the next day and my aching knee pain after spin did not appear.  Charlotte had me thinking about making subtle changes in my diet and little by slowly the results would follow. Leaving something on my plate was the first step and passing by the Cadbury rack was the second. Drinking more water will be daunting for me because I haven’t been able to stick to the idea that I needed a half-gallon of water everyday but maybe if I did there’d hardly be room for a sleeve of chocolate wafer cookies or two Klondike ice cream sandwiches. 

Have any of you taken this test? It doesn’t cost anything above our membership dues and there’s no pressure to continue with a pack of training sessions. The time alone I promise you will have you making a paradigm shift in how you take care of your body. I know it did for me.  You can rely on your own motivation as to whether or not you hire a trainer. God knows we have employed someone to do most of the chores in our lives why not one to manage our physiology. I’ve gone this far in my quest to attain fitness and Charlotte Ricci has motivated this sexagenarian. Seek her out you can’t miss her and don’t let her age fool you.  She’s yet another star in the Equinox Constellation. 

P.S. 

Mike Ryan is in her corner you can’t ask for a better endorsement.