The Sweet Life

gathers her big belly until, unrestrained by incontinence, her water breaks into a fit of violent rages.

She is the hurricane. wind that chaffs dead skulls white of flesh floating in oceans of dried grass, tumbleweeds and the desiccation of silent emptiness. He is the tested dust devil that vacuums the frail.

She reveals her tempestuous easterly by birthing, ‘he who is the wind that splays the lightning bolt from the Prussian of storm’. Westerly is born sunburned, whipcord thin, he is an angry ginger-brown. This westward child grifter repels his mother easterly homeward.

The union of this coffee stained wind is as unwanted as the deed. Dodger becomes his Facebook persona; this westerly wind is a true gypsy orphaned at birth, feeling assertions with the vindictiveness of a willful childish dust devil. Gypsy child swindler, smiling mischievously with pleasing eyes and a pinched whey-faced starving hollow of deprived, steals moisture away from puckered cactus and desert grit, pocketing puddles, drawing the shoreline evaporated to deceived. Gypsy child born, he is the I am the cliff top Oracle. Drawing in all from the windward blasts I read their thoughts in weather reports. Molest me the frigid king of the north or the sexy knave of the south; suffering the sultry witch from east and the gangsta’ delinquent of west. The gypsy winds force me reading their wordy twists. Read them like words on a page of blue sky clotted with clouds. They tell me their wayward stories chinook, tales blown hard and buffeted about. The core of their stories remains solid but the sides have been worn to soft shoulders as the familiar of everyday comes from afar to my present location. I scent their stories. I taste them in the everyday of mowed grass and hot pavement, the sizzled of BBQ’s and hot tree pollen drifting over me in a fine yellow talc brought to me in my isolation, brought to me by the gypsy winds.

The Sweet Life Chocolate’s lessons & living on your own terms

Like many moviegoers, I drooled over the movie Chocolat, which quietly oozed into pop culture in 2000, the year neither the world nor our country’s computer-based infrastructure came to a Y2K end.

The film’s protagonist is Vianne, a chocolatier and gypsy spirit who moves whenever the wind blows a certain way. Rather than recount the plot and risk subjecting anyone to unwelcome spoilers — since you really should see the film for yourself, or better yet, of course, read the book — I will simply touch on what this story taught me and continues to teach me.

One of the simplest themes in the film is the notion that it’s okay to be who you are — whoever you are. Vianne is open about the fact that her daughter was born out of wedlock. She wears clothing that suits her personality and shape, rather than draping herself in the dictates of a small village’s oppressive culture. She has fun. She helps underdogs, reaches out to the disenfranchised, and basically lives life to the fullest.

Inspired by Vianne’s example and encouragement, many of the town’s soulshackled residents begin to creep out of their invisible cages. They learn to enjoy and appreciate life’s sweet little pleasures with a new sense of confidence, trying new things, learning who they really are, spoiling each other now and again, and even spoiling themselves, often with that delicious, decadent, hedonistic universal treat, chocolate!

Relationships are enriched, prejudices dissolved, bridges of communication are built, and smiles appear on faces that previously had been dour and sullen. All because of chocolate, or at least what it represents.

As for Vianne, well she learned a thing or two along the way as well, as I still do, each time I treat myself to a viewing of this modern classic.

Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a Trader Joe’s cocoa-dusted chocolate truffle beckoning me.