I am the "ass" in aesthete

Yes, here I am again. Happily imbibed, or peda, as others would call it. Life is good, I realize, and there is *nothing* like a bar that will let you get trashed in the company of your almost five-year-old, while listening to a fabulously sexy singer-songwriter who is the interim act. Oh my god, I could have licked food from her palm, but, instead I licked it from my own. Kirsten, Becca, Adrian and Miguel (not to mention my darling child) indulged my inebriated state, dancing in sexy swirls, with the drink still in my hand, and a cover band, playing everything from CCR to Jimmy Cliff to CSNY and more, and I unabashedly singing at the top of my lungs, buried deep within the woods of the Santa Ynez mountain range. Strangest thing, here we were, after our late start, in the mountains, por fin!, and in a quaint bar with boar's heads and O'Keefe style cattle skulls, and a crackling fire, and a duende house that Isabella loved!

Then I hear someone call my name, "Ilana" and there is our little Brazilian princess, Vicki, older and younger than she really is all at the same time, out to dinner with her aunt. Reminder: you are never as anonymous as you think! Oh, and how my body feels free, as the music rolls over, and the kamikazes pulse through my veins (K totally did me in, vodka and triple sec with lime juice. mmmmm. I think I had five, but I am still not sure). I am reminded of the nights in D.F. with too much wine in my system and the sex spilling from my mouth, my eyes, the heat rolling in waves emanating desire from every inch of visible skin (and then some).

And the singer watches me as I dance, and Isabella holds me, twirling, and Miguel's birthday cake that Kirsten so thoughtfully bought, wet chocolate and cream between my fingers, devouring with my smile, running my tongue over my teeth, I am alive, and the loneliness that wandered by my side, just an hour before has been scared back into its cave or its closet.

My neckline plunges and the sticky wet alcohol that spilled down the valley tastes fabulous, and I would suck on my own breasts if only I could, but there are so many that would be happy to do me the honor, that I just spin and spin and spin.
Isabella convinces me to visit the duende house and we draw pictures, and she tells me that I am the most beautiful mommy that ever was, and for just one moment I believe her. The car pulses, and Kirsten drives, I turn myself over to the power of others, I enjoy the entrega, the letting go of everything that I usually control. I need a car, I will explore the valleys, calling to me, the olive trees, like the Spanish landscape that haunts me, only missing are the virile toros and the solitude. I think I could supply at least one of those things.

The mesa sunset from yesterday, and the Reisling that followed the picnic, dolphins showing us their felicitous fanfares, and the smell of mushroom brie risotto, as Kirsten and Becca prepare the Spanish hour dinner. The sand beneath my shoes, and the muscles aching and pidiendo manos, and stretches that will bring the familiar tearing, tugging and burning.

Oh. oh oh oh. This is my life, it is, for a day. Tomorrow I will be a responsible adult again, but tonight I will be in love. In love. In love. Tonight and forever, as the land stretches before my eyes and the skin stretches before my hands, and my mind can walk the hills and valleys that are not mine, but that would be, if they were not private property. Perhaps I can strike a deal with the owner, as long as I don't take too much soil with me, if I pitch a tent, and tread softly. If I love the land and then let it be. Yes, perhaps that is a possibility.

I had no idea of the beauty just within the mountains, and now, I cannot go back to unknowing, I must visit every inch that lays itself before me. The grey-green hills, the fog, the blue, the deep lakes and the marauding turkey -guardians. I want to feel it all. Lay myself in the earth, feel its pulse, taste its earthy silt on my tongue, in the corner of my smile as I rock, twirling in ecstasy, hands intertwined in the grass, and stretching, scratching my back as if an animal in the spring.

Yes, I *am* the ass in aesthete, and the cold spring springs forth in my hands, and pissing like a race horse is so fulfilling, like the reverse of the unspeakable acts that fill my mind. It is nothing, a trifle, a moment, and yet. And yet...