My Hips Do Lie

It is a big old hilly city out here. To be able to get through the seven hills on which this city is built on, you need a degree of fitness attribution. I am by no means a sporty person and I am by no means the fittest either. If I can make it to the bus stop without pulsating lungs, it is a triumph.

Almost a year ago I was proselytised into a new form of sport, I mean dance – Salsa! My hips had me believe that neither the hills of this city nor anything else they could ever engage in would:

  A- Reduce their burgeoning size

B- Give them eternal innomination

 The past 15 years saw the birth and the consequent rapid growth of my hips. There was the occasional truce here and there but for the most part it was an onslaught on neighbouring citadels of legs, bum and tum! They got greedy and were not content with their specified or desired territory. There was no stopping them.

  Oh the horror!!

The sovereignty of my legs, bum and tum and their right to exist independently was thus tested and tried; pushed to the fringes of no definition. With no afore mentioned referendum, a union was sought.

Salsa dancing proved otherwise. It came in at a precarious time in our affiliation. To an extent Salsa provided us with some truce, a common ground…at the very best it gave me the ammunition I needed to respond to this offensive.

After having the pleasure of being swirled, twirled and twisted around the dance floor to the rhythms of Mambo, Cucaracha, Basic back and Opening out, hours on end every week; a white flag of mercy was waved by my hips. Something I wasn’t familiar with was taking place, a new phenomenon was emerging!

Oh the joy!!!

Muscles, tendons, labrum, cartilage that I didn’t know existed were beginning to surface. The cries of help emerging from the opposition were now all but too palpable.  I revelled in this: in this revelation that my hips concealed from me.

Alas these hips were responding to something!!!

As it turns out we both liked Salsa; so much so that we came to a mutual agreement hitherto unheard of. Insofar, we are enjoying this harmonious period. My hips have agreed to put the ambush on hold and I stopped my feeble threats of joining the gym and exercising.

I am not certain how long this peace process will last for, but I am sure I speak for both of us when I say that I and my hips are currently enjoying the right to life, liberty and security provided under the Salsa 2013 Treaty.

 

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Soliciting Sunrise

The Summer Solstice could have done with a little soliciting today!

 

 

In response to the Daily Post: Set for Solstice.

 

A Nation of Poets and Bards

It has taken me an awfully long time to finally make a blog. Three years if memory serves me right. I never quite understood what it all entailed other than of course doing the obvious- blogging. Therefore, I have been doing a bit of scouring in the hope of understanding how to utilise this site and after a fair bit of searching and stumbling on few illustrious blogs, it dawned on me that I needed to ‘introduce myself to potential readers’. Thanks Daily Post for pointing that out to me, YAY!

Now how can I encapsulate what this blog is about in a nutshell …? Hmmm let’s give it a go.

So legend has it that I come from a nation with avid oral traditions – not in the kinky sense but rather in storytelling. So detailed and rich it is that a mere narration of trivia could give an acclaimed Steven Spielberg movie a run for its money and that isn’t hyperbole.

Growing up I often had the (dis) pleasure of receiving handwritten or tape recorded messages (yes folks I’m from the Walkman era and I have just given away my age bracket, shoot) from distant relatives to family friends and characters I have never met; where a simple hello turned into a poetical portent in itself. Sometimes it even made me wonder if these people were competing in a bardic poetry competition. Clearly their poetastery was lost on me then and naturally it took me a while to understand that this was a little more than an emotive grunting. More often than not these messages started with something along the lines of:

I give thou sincerest of greetings

One that stems out of the

Hollowest of thy muscular organs

Transported to thou through the air waves

That distance us

*Side note: if you are unfamiliar with the culture and such traditions you might be stunned when you find a long lost relative showering you in person with such elaborate romanticised, elongated passages, always accompanied by the continental and arduous four kisses on either cheeks. Perhaps even uncalled for if you are lacking a bit on the emotional side of things. Alas, the times I miss-calculated the number of kisses required or rather their timing and landed myself in the awkwardness that is kissing someone’s lips…YIKES… I know!! Oh the utter embarrassment. I better move along because that warrants mortifying memories to come forth.

So by not following this long line of traditions I feel as if though I’m betraying my ancestors and denying my heritage. I am not an oral person (again not in the kinky sense, so please do refrain from such connotations). I am more of a writer. I could never relay a diatribe, a discourse orally. I was never blessed with the “gift of the gab”. But I do have a way with words, or so I am told (hmmmm pauses to think this through. Really now isn’t the time to be doubting oneself).

I feel as if though I’m harbouring a defect gene, some kind of gremlin in my makeup for not having such gift/burden (depending on what angle you are looking at it from). I come from a family of talkers, a nation of story tellers. We weren’t dubbed “a nation of poets and bards” for no reason. I think Margaret Laurence was onto something when she gave us that title.

But in my defence poetry (or rather prose) doesn’t have to be limited to the spoken format. Hence, why I created this blog after much debate that is because I am a highly indecisive individual; as you will come to know throughout the course of this blog. And whilst we are on the subject of my inherent indecisiveness, I guess now is a good time (as any) to confess that due to this little idiosyncrasy of mine I wasn’t able to categorise this blog into one specific genre.  I mean why pigeon hole yourself..?! The possibilities are endless so why not explore whatever topic or put forward whatever idea/problem/ vituperation/ personal opines and otherwise, eh..?!

I am very aware that I have just given a long winded diatribe of an explanation to the question posed at the beginning of this blog post. I am not good at explaining things so I like to think that I have done a pretty darn good job at answering: what is this blog about..? Having said that, if you still feel that you are none the wiser then hey, stick around and maybe we will figure it out together, one day, fingers crossed.

And on that note…

Happy reading folks!