I lift the glass of warm Martinique Merlot to my nose and inhale with every fold of my soft lungs. The esters fill whatever spot it is in my mind that dreams, with material for another creative slumber. So completely inebriated with it’s dark otherworldly aroma am I, I sit the glass down without even taking a sip.

It the most difficult of exercises, this being in the moment. To take the time to smell a drink so completely that the entire subconscious is saturated, the whole body mirrors the scent’s attributes, that the observer and the observed become indistinguishable. Or to look, actually look into the eyes of the person speaking to you. What color were the eyes of the last person you connected with?

As I set the glass back onto the table, indeed without even one sip, the tropical nite breeze blows through my tissue paper-thin shirt and one of my new friends, a costumer here on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean 2, skips over the chit chat and asks me directly, "What do you want to do in life?" A piercing, timely, and utterly welcome inquery, for the responding to which will demand personal growth, no matter how many times answered.

You know, I worked my dream gig, STOMP. And it really was everything I hoped it would be. But what then? What, when at 28 you've gotten to do what it was you always dreamed of doing in your career – how ambitious are you to book the next gig? And what when you happen to be one of those people not fascinated by money – how driven are you to get a job just for the accumulation of paper tickets? I amuse myself with the confidence of my simple, but difficult response, "What I really want is to travel, dance, and be in love".

This time I raise the glass to my lips and take in just enough of the dry, yet somehow sweet, intoxicating dream, as we all slowly silently nod our heads. It seems funny to me how we spend our lives taking classes on marketing, researching the internet on how to build a better machine, and reading books on aromatherapy. But how many of us are really out there seeking wisdom in that one thing we all, from the Caribbean to Huntington Beach, truly desire more than anything else - possibly the entire purpose of these fragile mortal bodies, the celebration of and meaning of existence wrapped into one religion-defying, government-disintegrating, illusion-shattering experience: love. We live our lives as if it were owed to us, but perhaps we should till the soil, prime the canvas, and become the site where such things are likely to happen. Perhaps it is time to become an expert in love.

I am on the island of Dominica, dancing every day and visiting a man whom is working on the Pirates movie. There are 75,000 locals on this island, all of whom seem to be much more educated in life loving than most of the people I meet at auditions or in dance class in southern California. Whether it be the oppressive heat, the comparatively unstructured system, or all the exotic tropical fruits, I, too, am slowing down and making it important to practice that simple, but most difficult of exercises: being in the moment – the only research an expert really requires…

When he stepped off the boat, returning from another 16 hour day at work, my lover's eyes were brown. When he pressed his angelic lips against mine before the sun rose this morning,

his eyes were brown again.

0 comments Links to this post