Hello World

Hello world!September 16, 2009 by Rita Messina
Whoa. My first day as a blogger. This just might prove to be an interesting journey for me. Every night for the last 30 years or so before I go to sleep, one thought creeps into my head: I should write. I love to write. Why am I not writing? Why don’t I sit up in bed every night in a frilly nightgown and write in my lovely lavender journal with purple ink. Probably because I don’t own a frilly nightgown nor a lavender journal. I do like purple ink though. I read constantly,and I wonder if that will make my writing a little more entertaining? Or deeper? Or more profound? Who knows. I have an aquaintance that is a published blogger for the Seattle PI and she is always writing cute and quirky stories. Then she writes something that I don’t understand but I’m pretty sure it’s because she has a PHD and, well, I don’t. I have street smarts, or as close to street smarts as one can get when one lives in the suburbs of Seattle. Does it count that I do go to downtown Seattle and the waterfront frequently? All in the course of searching for the perfect dance. I am a zydeholic. There, I’ve said it. Zydeco is music that originated in the hinterlands of Louisiana. Opelousas, LA to be exact. Or Eunice, LA, depending on who you are talking to and where they are from. It’s a ka-chanka chanka music with an accordian and a rubboard. Throw in a bass, a guitar and a set of drums and you have created my nirvana. I have traveled to Oregon, California, Nevada, Texas, Louisiana, Florida and many miles of the Caribbean Ocean in search of the perfect dance. Dancing zydeco can create bliss in my mind, my heart, my soul. I forget for that brief period of time that my husband left me (I actually have pretty much forgotten that permanently), that people I love have died, that people I love are sick and are growing older. I forget that I have to work, that I have bills to pay, that I have to compromise, that there are homeless people, people out of work. All that yucky stuff we are bombarded with goes away for about 4 minutes. Then it goes away again for another four minutes, and another. Unless Geno’s playing and it can go away for about 25 minutes (I think he played 45 minutes straight for one dance on the last cruise). Then as the evening comes to a close, my endorphins have made me happy, loving and blissful. I leave the club loving everybody and probably in love with everybody. In the 30 minutes or so it takes me to get home, the muscles tighten up, I hobble to my bedroom, take an Aleve and crawl in bed, happy and satiated. And I lay there smiling and review each dance and how wonderful my evening turned out. And then I start thinking: I should write, I love to write, why am I not writing?