Construction has resumed on my cyber-pyramid.  The news wasn’t so good for my laptop that quit and walked off the worksite.  My external hard drive didn’t totally have my back.  I lost a lot of writing files but managed to keep my collection of the odd and silly and useless…go figure.

I’m drafting new blueprints and plan to forge ahead with another game plan.  They would only issue a learner’s permit for me and this new computer, as they lost me after “Can I help you?”

I’m back on track and feeling all warm and fuzzy.  In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d share a romantic story of my own…get out your mini-violins.

This is an excerpt from a book I’ve written about my dating experiences.  Remember…those who can’t…teach.

Killer Grin

If your heart isn’t in your mouth and your stomach doesn’t drop when the roller coaster hits the top of that first big hill, then you know it’s time to get off of the ride.  I find myself pushing the car along the tracks just to keep it going.  I’ve stayed too long at the fair.

My friends were tired of asking me when my book was going to be finished.  Truthfully, I had no final chapter…the one where I ride off into the sunset with the man of my dreams and live happily ever after.

I’m prepared to ride off alone…I already have my own horse.  I just don’t want to spend any more time in solitary confinement.  I’m not that interesting to myself.

What IS love?  It’s unexplainable and unpredictable.  You don’t know when it’s coming and you rarely see it leaving until it’s too far gone.  It is as painful as it is joyful.  It’s disappointment runs as deep as its exhilaration rises high…and yet we all want it and are willing to take the risk.  It takes a lot of courage to keep looking for love even if it continues to elude you.

Love is blind and deaf, and a lot of the time…really really dumb.

I read somewhere that our DNA calls for us to be attracted to one type of person and by instinct we spend our lives searching for that match.  We grow impatient and settle for close enough or good enough.  Unless our DNA match is searching for us at the same time and we happen to be in the same place then we are never destined to meet.

Love becomes unfinished business.

There are those who find their needle in a haystack.  They recognize their cosmic connection and can’t keep their hands off of each other until the day they die.  They don’t have to keep trying to refill their hearts, because for them, there is no one else.

Was my failure to find my DNA match holding me back?  Is close enough good enough?

I was stuck in neutral and I couldn’t figure out why.

And then one day something happened…just like in the movies.

I was working one of my catering jobs at an office opening.  The guests were nice and the staff was really friendly.  The other bartender and I were setting up glasses and wine at the receptionist’s desk.  A tall cutie pie walked up to the bar and struck up a conversation with me.  My boss had mentioned that there was a guy who worked there who would be perfect for me…and I figured this must be him.

We all continued talking while I crawled around under the desk cleaning up the glass I’d just broken…what else is new?  When I stood up, I noticed a man by the door.

He was standing in a Valley of the Dolls…beautiful blondes with ice-cube sized diamonds and hair that wouldn’t move in a tornado.  One of the Glamazons said something to him and he grinned.

It was an ear-to-ear slash…so sexy, so bold and confident, and so so distracting to me.  I gave some serious thought to marching across the room and kissing that grin right off of his face.  ?!?

Another group of people came through the door and I lost sight of him in the crowd.  I just knew that if I had gotten close enough to him he would have smelled fantastic.

Later that night I went home and Facebooked the name of the guy that I had been chatting with at the bar…the one my boss wanted to match me up with.

When the profile picture popped up, it wasn’t him at all…it was Killer Grin.  Uh oh.  I held my finger over the friend request and hit send.

Though I’m sure he had no idea who I was, he accepted the request.  And then my old friend failure to yield appeared and in an historical moment for me, I sent this man with the incredible smile my phone number and wrote:  “You should call me sometime.”

This was WAY out of my comfort zone.  I was not used to doing the pursuing, but I knew that if I didn’t do it, I would wonder for the rest of my life what it would have been like to kiss that grin…

and now I know…

it was amazing.

I was finally struck by lightning.  It simply hadn’t occurred to me that he wouldn’t feel the same way.  And that’s how quickly he went from taking my breath away to knocking the wind out of me.

My path had crossed with a man who was just beginning his middle-aged crazy.  He wanted for nothing and needed everything and had to continue in his own direction.  I could have pointed out the quicksand to him, but he would have run into it anyway.

It was something he said to me that told me it was time to end my book.  “I wonder about the missed opportunities because I stayed too long.”

I knew exactly what I was struggling with.  I had stayed too long waiting for the right moment, for my happily ever after and because of that I was missing my happy right now.

The journey away from my divorce was never about finding the man of my dreams.  It was about putting Cynthia back together again.  What began as validation has become redemption.  There are no missing pieces that matter.  I am whole and I am happy.

In reality, only some of us get happily ever after.  But all of us can have happy right now…and I’m okay with that.

Months later I was asked to work a party at Killer Grin’s house.  I was looking forward to seeing him again.  I was curious to see if that smile still had the same power.

We walked up to his front door and he opened it…and there it was…my undoing…that grin. Kryptonite to me.

I don’t like the taste of bittersweet.  It doesn’t go down easily, but it’s part of it and I would rather swallow it than spit it out.  Killer Grin and I spoke for a few minutes in his driveway.  It was a gorgeous fall evening and it felt “right” and I wished that he would kiss me and for a fleeting second I thought that he might.

But that only happens in the movies…right?

I doubt there will ever be a time that I won’t want to kiss that grin right off of his face.  This amazes me and when I think about it…it makes me grin too.

I’ve never carried a torch before.  I can’t tell you if the weight of it changes or it gets less bright as time goes by.  I’ll have to let you know.

I took a chance and I put myself out there…and I’m still standing.

I heard a popular television matchmaker claim that women past a certain age are “hard to place”.  Really?  I continue to fly in the face of it…I can hold my own.

I’m smart and I’m funny and even though I’m no longer one of the most beautiful girls in the room, I’ve figured out that the secret to being the center of attention is by making everyone else feel that they are.

My story…like yours…is unfolding in its own beautiful and mysterious way and I still believe that something great is going to happen.

Now is the right moment.  Take chances.  Today is the best day.

Day Three Hundred and Eleven…Happy Valentine’s Day…love keeps us moving…

Cynthia Neilson

Songbird Whitney Houston was laid to rest today.  Her funeral was celebrated on television and the internet for all the world to see…her final performance.  I am confused, because it seems she was surrounded by good people who thought highly of her.  They hold her up now in glory, when she doesn’t need them anymore.  I’m not pointing blame…maybe they grew tired of having their hands slapped away when she began to stumble.

Fame didn’t kill Whitney Houston…excess and addiction did.  Fodder for magazine and sensationalistic television, she became a paperless doll, dancing in the fairy dust trail that her superstar left in its wake.

In recent interviews and photos she looked lonely and confused and desperate…like a gambler who needs to let it ride one more time.

“We love you Whitney” was the theme of the Grammy Awards…and yet, the silent “but” hung there like a bad note.  It was a rock n’ roll version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”…a room full of recovery and rehab graduates and gonna-bes, silently thankful it wasn’t them found naked in a bathtub.

The closeness that they claimed to Whitney in her death seems hollow and makes me wonder where they all were in the preceding days when she was so obviously in trouble.

Now the praise and glory drips from their mouths like honey…sticky and a little too sweet.

Whitney made bad choices and surrounded herself with parasites who saw her celebrity and her money as their own path to glory.  They will crawl out of the woodwork now and claim they tried to help…just to get an extra fifteen minutes of fame.

I wonder if she would have gone down the same road, had she been an ordinary girl living a regular life…or was addiction just part of her destiny?  Her life of privilege could have afforded her every kind of help there is…her life of privilege afforded her every access to what eventually destroyed her.  She had it all…but it wasn’t enough to fill her void.  In the end, the choice was hers to make…and she chose badly.

Addiction turns you into a selfish cannibal.

The light of the tarnished woman with the golden voice went out without a whisper…alone. The radiance of the little girl who stood in the front of the church and sang for the joy of it was gone a long time ago.

I leave you with the words of Dylan Thomas….

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Day three hundred and seven…life is fragile and precious.

Cynthia Neilson

The Yankee in me took a hit today.  It snowed here in middle Tennessee, just enough to call the lemmings out for the bread and milk march.  I had a brunch date with a perfectly disrespectful man…just my type…and I was determined not to let a little snow get in the way of possible true love or really good pancakes.

I drove out of my holler to the big curve that never gets any sun.  It was really icy and I turned around and came home.  I am…officially…a woosie girl.

To reward myself for playing it safe, I cracked open a frozen pizza and ate two Dove bars while I waited for it to bake.  I burned the roof of my mouth on some sort of cheese imposter and had to hunt up some Tums for the Dove bar revisit.

I have a fire going in my wood burning stove and some really good port from a winery down in Franklin and thought I might wax poetic about sex…lies…and video tape……..

Sixty-eight year old Mimi Alford decided to write a book about her 18 month affair with JFK.  It is her right and privilege to do so…but I don’t think anyone really cares.  The scandal that it would have been back in the sixties doesn’t exist now, unless she has a sex tape to hawk with it.

I’m calling you out, sister.  I’ve read your explanation as to why you wrote it, and it still sounds to me like you aren’t clear as to whether you should be apologizing, accusing, or asking for forgiveness…and no one is left gasping in disbelief.  You’re too late…we’ve been sexed out, Mims…the morality of 2012 doesn’t care to consider the morality of 1960…it does not compute…unless you have some sexts or a sex tape, it will be a hard sell.

JFK was a womanizer and it was understood and accepted and dealt with the way all things untoward were back then…behind closed doors and whispered in ears.  It was private…period.  His value as a world leader surpassed his peccadilloes and he was accommodated and protected…there was honor among thieves.  Of course, if he’d had a sex tape…well…we’d be talking millions.

Countries, civilizations even, have been toppled over sexual shenanigans…this is nothing new.  Sex as a release is control and control is power…and the worm turns.

I believe that Clinton could have short-sheeted his whole impeachment if he had just fessed up and admitted that he had an inappropriate relationship with another woman outside of his marriage.  Instead he chose a ridiculous defense, so offensive in nature that he made a fool out of his wife and every other woman in this country.

Putting any part of anything naked anywhere in anyone is sexual…and his redefinition of what sexual relations are would have given George Carlin material for a whole new act.

I’ve listened, bemused, when the argument is made that it doesn’t matter what politicians or leaders do behind closed doors.  Only a cheater would make that argument.  I’ve been on both sides of that bed, so I know the rhetoric.

Picture someone running on the campaign promise:  “I love my wife/husband and my children 98% of the time…the other 2% is my private business.  I’m under stress and need the release.”

It still remains the ultimate betrayal, though these days, it almost seems a rite of passage. That it was so silently tolerated, once upon a time, had more to do with honor and pride and trust.  Hush money didn’t have as many zeroes in front of the decimal point like it does now.

All due respect to Ms. Alford, I can’t see any good coming from this tome, other than monetary.  She seems to want to clear her name, and if this makes her feel better about herself, then I guess she’s doing what she needs to do.  Her story goes from squeamish to whimsical as she describes racing ducks in the bathtub with the head of the free world.  I’m just trying to figure out what she else she has to say that would take up an entire book…unless she has drawings of Johnny’s privates…and a sex tape…

I can’t help but feel it is at the expense of the family left behind in the Kennedy riptide.  They’ve already paid a high enough price.  Enough already.

Archie Bunker once campaigned that the airways would be safer if all passengers carried a rod.

In the same spirit…let’s make it mandatory for all of us to do a sex tape.  They could be protected with a copyright and officially documented.  We could choose from three settings:  Tropical bliss…winter wonderland…or rainy daze at the cabin.  It could start a whole new industry…make-up, hair, director of photography, props…little mini-movies.

I’ve got dibs on whoever does Oprah’s lighting for mine.  Of course, with the men in my age range…we’d have to come back another day for take two…

Day three hundred and six…enjoying my port in a sex storm…

Cynthia Neilson

I’m dragging my rusty old sword back into the arena of the politically incorrect…I do a lot of pushups…so lifting it over my head by myself won’t be a problem.  I don’t look for an army anymore…outrage and defiance don’t muster the reaction and support like it used to.  Not getting involved is the great disconnect and the energy of the moment.  Me…well, I’ve never quite gotten the hang of keeping my mouth shut.

Still, you can’t swing a sword and make any noise if you’re sitting on a bench.  We’ve become a country full of spectators.

And we come by it honestly…because there is no longer any difference between fiction and non-fiction.   It is “1984”…and George Orwell is Nostradamus.

Big Brother is alive and well…and we all know too much.

It’s all Newspeak…our lives, like reality t.v., scripted and edited to make it more “real”…thumbs up…thumbs down…in bored indifference, we sit with our hands under our chins waiting for the ones who climb the highest to take the biggest fall.

We’ve been had.  Life….live streaming…a school of Proles washed away in a current of alcohol and drugs, pornography disguised as fashion and entertainment and a national lottery dangled out there like the Golden Ticket.

There is no going back…we want everything NOW…questions answered, problems solved,  enemies alleviated…and we’re open 24/7…over-night express…just to get it done.

Our Founding Fathers drafted in our Constitution, a Bill of Rights, that doggedly weathered the growing pains of our super nova nation.  Those pioneers had foresight to allow for change, but I don’t think any of them envisioned how big it would all get…and how easily the Constitution and the Bill of Rights could be used as a shield…and as a weapon.

There are wrinkles now on the face of America…we’ve begun to show our age.

The First Amendment in our Constitution is the one that gets held to scrutiny the most…Freedom of Speech…the right to be heard…and with freedom of speech comes freedom of expression and with freedom of expression comes freedom of interpretation…and then there’s the matter of opinion, regardless of the responsibility for its consequences.

The Constitution was a work in progress for those boys in Philadelphia…almost eleven years before it was drafted, they sent out a little warning of what was to come…it was called The Declaration of Independence…and it started like this:

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Clever boys…because in its ambiguity they allowed for ALL beliefs…

It very clearly says:  NATURE’S GOD…and THEIR Creator.

Nowhere is it specific to one religion because that is the right they fought for…that is the truth they believed in.  IT IS THAT SIMPLE.

I AM…AND SO ARE YOU.

If God is your creator, then it is your privilege and right as a human being to believe that and live that…even before your right as an American.

I don’t respect the thought process of religious superiority.  It is manmade and it is a controlling defense mechanism.  I don’t recognize it and as a result it has no hold on me and no mystery.

The political climate in our country and across the globe is caustic.  Though other countries would criticize our nation, they all desire the freedom of speech which we are guaranteed and seem to take for granted…they are clamoring to be heard.  Religion is being used for political gain both as a shield and a sword…a door and a wall.

Politics and religion…oil and water…if you shake it up enough, it mixes together…but eventually it settles, and the oil is what rises to the top.

Does a candidate’s religion define him…or outline him?  In truth, he should not hold his God higher than any other God…and if his calling is such, then he cannot represent the people equally, which he is bound by our Constitution to do.  His personal calling cannot usurp the rights of the people he is pledging to represent.

In Orwell’s 1984…the Ministries of Peace, Truth, Love and Plenty had the ability to destroy words…Ampleforth erased “God” out of a Kipling poem.

It was fiction…

Here in Tennessee religious conservatives are pushing a bill called “Don’t Say Gay”.

The agenda isn’t even thinly veiled…judgment, though they know they will “be judged.”

God is not a henchman.

In “1984” you were sent to Room 101 to be tortured….when you walked through the door you were faced with the worst thing you could ever imagine.

Imagine that thing was being told….

…You don’t exist.

The Constitution might as well have been written with an Etch a Sketch.

I leave you with words from our own Declaration of Independence…they are ringing louder than ever.

“…A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

Day three hundred and three…Where are our champions?

Cynthia Neilson