Happy New Year!

Image: Paris

My 27th year was probably my toughest yet. My optimistic naivety was my saving grace this year (I do make magnificent mistakes). But I'm grateful I learned so much.

Apparently, I look for safety in the most dangerous of places. It's when I feel most safe that I'm most in peril. This past year, I wasn't safe. It's no wonder the skizo virgo in me was a panicked mess. 2010 was filled with the unknown, great loss, and me searching for the best way out.

Apparently, I'm also a brazen girl. I take great risks. I'm brutal in my honesty and I boldly go after my desires. (Authenticity, baby!) I follow my heart and I make it happen. I'm a shaker. I need to see physical action and movement. I define the world and myself by what acts we do and how we act towards each other.

And apparently sometimes, I "make it happen" a bit too quickly for the rest of the world (and myself) to catch up. I move quicker than most people blink and I often forget to leave time to think. (Must be the hot-blooded Italian in me).

But this is my chosen path, and I believe it takes a certain amount of bravado/stupidity to walk in my over-the-knee black leather stiletto boots. I have no regrets. And I hope you will continue to follow me.

And so my resolutions for 2011:

1. Be true. Tell the truth to myself and others.

2. Be bold and brave but never afraid. Never give in to my fears.

3. Begin. Rebuild and conquer.

4. Be calm. Take the time to pause.

And to the palmist, the voodoo priest, and my psychic life coach (yes, I'm aware I'm a crazy kook) who all told me that I'd lose everything at 27, suffer losses that would profoundly change me and the way I lived life, and then gain everything and more back... In hindsight, I'm sorry. I don't think I really believed you. But since the first part of your prediction proved true, I'll raise a glass at midnight tonight to toast a hope that you're right about the rest of it.

5. Faith. Trust and have more faith! ;-)

Don't spend your life chasing miracles. Don't spend your life living regrets. Be brave. Make love and change.

I wish you a year filled with happiness and adventure.
The Speakeasy is 1 years old!

Happy New Year!

xoxo,
A. Esterina


Image: the champagne is in the tub

Checkmate

Image: gorgeoustakethecity

"You could be the king but watch the queen conquer."
- Kanye West

In the game of chess, the king is the most important piece but he's also the weakest. Trap a king, win the game.

The queen is the most powerful piece. She roams free and does whatever the fuck she wants. My kinda girl.

Checkmate! The king is dead.

I totally love this game!

True Love

Image: misswallflower

Merry Christmas

All ye ladies and gents, have a Dickens Merry Christmas Day!

Happy Christmas & love,
A. Esterina
xoxo


Images: Whiskey Soaked Cherries

A Long Winter’s Nap

{This is a short, meditation on Christmas that appeared in the Editorial section of The New York Times last year...}

Some years, the holidays seem to bustle right past, and you’re hurled into the new year — flung onward by the gravity of time — before you know it. There are also years, and this is one, when darkness seems to pile up in drifts as the nights grow longer and the day goes down into its burrow earlier and earlier.

Even at its highest, the sun reclines low along the horizon — resting on its elbow, so to speak — and you can feel the coming of dusk as soon as the day slips past noon. This season, Christmas is the pivot of time, when the sun comes to its solstice and we come, too, to a place where our hearts can rest.

What should we feel today on this new morning?

That is the question Christmas always poses. But our feelings know no “should.” We feel what we feel, as one after another the Christmases go past. Over the years, it adds up to a medley of all our emotions, joy, gratitude, compassion, generosity, love, hospitality — and sometimes also loneliness, mistrust, miserliness and even despair.

This is the season for rejoicing at the hope of our own redemption, and yet rejoicing doesn’t always arrive on schedule, any more than hope or redemption do. The fact is that we make what we can of Christmas each year, and some years Christmas makes something entirely unexpected out of us.

Breakfast will come late this morning because we were up, most of us, late into the eve of this holiday, savoring how festive the darkness can be. And before breakfast is long over and the first toy has been broken, the first tears dried, dusk will be gathering outside again. That is the unfailing gift of this season — to comfort us with so much nightfall, to gather us together, and hold us close.

—New York Times Editorial Published: December 24, 2009. A version of this article also appeared in print on December 25, 2009, on page A30 of the New York edition.

Source: lukestorms.wordpress

The Piano

Image: Johnny Depp

"I've only dared to take to an extreme that which you haven't even dared to take to halfway." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Underground Man

I went to visit my old piano today.

And there I was tinkering away on the keys of my out-of-tune upright in a dark and cold storage unit, surrounded by ghosts in neat stacked boxes, playing what I could remember of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. I can hardly play anymore but every now and then a classical piece will come back to me.

And now here I sit on the Eve of Christmas Day with an open bottle of wine and a deep love for a dark and brilliant man: Dostoevsky. I'm in the midst of reading his life works. Wine. The Brothers Karamazov. And me.

And the travelling scents of the makings of our Christmas Eve feast coming out of mom's kitchen.

And so I wish you a Happy Christmas, darlings.

It Was a Wonderful Life

Image: It's a Wonderful Life

It was the same every year... Nanu prepared the castagna's (chestnuts) while watching, It's a Wonderful Life. Grand-maman watched Jimmy Stewart (her favourite leading man) from the kitchen as she fried the cudderieddi (potato fritter doughnuts). Sounds traditional, right? My grandparents were anything but...

My grand-maman Esterina was elegant, fiery, and original. She was ahead of her time. Not a traditional nonna at all. In fact, most people wondered if she was even Italian. She only wore Chanel No. 5, she fashionably dressed in pearls and pumps, she avidly discussed politics, she spoke with a soft lilt of a British accent, and she was the only person that could go head-to-head with my grandfather. And win.

My grandfather Valentino was a long lost member of the
Rat Pack. He had an effortless cool. Nanu was a real gentleman, and he never left the house without donning a hat. He told the best stories, he was always the life of the party, and he was a generous man with a heart of gold that could make anything grow. And O Dio he was stubborn.

The conventional part about my progressive Italian-Canadian grandparents was their sense of family. And it shined every Christmas at their authentic Calabrian Christmas Eve feast
(la viglia) that would include thirteen dishes centered around seafood. The baccala (salted cod) was nanu's personal favourite. But lobster and crab, scallops and oysters, and always broccoli with shaved parmesan would be served with an abundance of vino and cheese.

The ladies would mix drinks (gin and tonic my grand-maman's favourite) as everyone gathered in the kitchen to cook, talk, and laugh. Nanu would pass around shots of brandy or cognac. My cousin Vince, my brother Adriano, and I would put up the last of the decorations and set the table. All the while, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. would be playing in the background.

My family always lingered around the dinner table long after the meal was over. And Nanu would tell us tales about our family history and Italia. Grand-maman would tell us anecdotes about nanu, our parents, or us as kids. And we would talk and laugh over the vino. Eventually, nanu would get the castagna's, some pannetone (sweet bread), and champagne to toast our blessings. Even in those moments, I knew I was lucky to be part of the scene: My family gathered around the table, the freshly fallen snow, and grand-maman's decorated tree.

But last Christmas, my nanu was diagnosed with cancer. I spent much of the holiday taking care of him until the day after Christmas when he collapsed and was taken to the hospital where he died three months later. My nanu was a strong man and a brave fighter to the very end, but he left us suddenly as my grand-maman had only a few years before. His passing marks the end of an era for my family.
Of course there will be new memories in the making, but Christmas will never be the same.

This Christmas Eve will be the most difficult and strange. I am most looking forward to midnight mass in Italian where I can light a candle and pay my respects. I'm a girl whose made a life (and a blog) out of making the most of everything but this Christmas, I simply don't have the heart for it.

What I admired most about my grandparents was their ability to adapt to change. They left their old country behind and embraced their new life in Canada without clinging to the old country as most immigrants did. And yet, they always retained their culture. I know they'd expect me to do the same. Next year.

I miss my extraordinary grandparents. It was a wonderful life.

Delight

Image: Ryan Gosling

Morning Light

Image: rumid

Green tea and me blogging from this space every morning. Wouldn't it be lovely?