That reminds me

Just imagine yourself seated on a shadowy terrace,

And beside you is a girl who stirs you more strangely than an heiress.

It is a summer evening at its most superb,

And the moonlight reminds you that To Love is an active verb.

Your hand clasps hers, which rests there without shrinking,

And after a silence fraught with romance you ask her what she is thinking.

She starts and returns from the moon-washed distances to the shadowy veranda,

And says, Oh I was wondering how many bamboo

shoots a day it takes to feed a baby Giant Panda.

Or you stand with her on a hilltop and gaze on a winter sunset,

Everything is as starkly beautiful as a page from Sigrid Unset,

And your arm goes around her waist and you make an avowal which for masterfully marshaled emotional content might have been a page of Ouida's or Thackeray's,

And after a silence fraught with romance she says,

I forgot to order the limes for the daiquiris.

Or in a twilight drawing room you have just asked the most momentous of questions,

And after a silence fraught with romance she says,

I think this little table would look better where that little table is, but then where would

that little table go, have any suggestions?

Yes, thats the way they go around.....

It isn't that nothing is sacred to them, it's just that at the Sacred Moment they are thinking of something else.

- Ogden Nash

she will dance

I was five years old and at gramma's house . We put on our "jammies", as we call them and right before bed she would tell me about the music box that set on her dresser.
I only remember her big brother had brought it back to her from WWII in Japan. But it was special for a million different reasons. It was decorated with inlaid pearl and ornate carvings.
It had little drawers on the sides and a big compartment in the middle. That was my favorite part. The middle. The middle had velvet lining half and a mirror base on the other half. As I would open the lid, soft music would begin to play slowly. I would take the ballerina figurine with her magnet base, and quickly try to find the unseen floating magnet beneath the surface of the mirror. If I was quick enough I would get to watch her gracefully spin to the sound of the music box. The music only lasted a while though. See, this music box had been wound too tightly, too many times. It wouldn't wind anymore. It played only
when you opened the lid, and often that was only a few seconds. But when she danced, it was magical.
Sometimes she danced, sometimes I missed it.... but there was always next time. And maybe next time she would dance longer.

When I need solitude, I go to gramma's and watch the ballerina. She takes me back in time. When I watch her, im five years old , eye level with my gramma's dresser, anxiously waiting to see if she will spin for me.
I have no worries. She will dance tonight.

To see it.

"Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the talked-of travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in China.
We want to see it."
-mostly Vita Sackville-West