"Kiss of Eden" -- A Music Review

I am certainly not a music expert, but I surely enjoy a good CD when I hear one. Being a writer and an avid reader, I also enjoy a good story, and I particularly love music with profound lyrics that can transport me and allow me a glimpse of the author’s soul.

When I listened to Kiss of Eden by Cherie Lassiter, I should have fastened my seat belt before the trip, because from the first few notes of Shake Me Up I was instantly lifted into a whirlwind of feeling and longing, love and loss, struggle and renewal.

As the songs played, one after the other, I felt like I was watching a film I could not miss a moment of. Cherie Lassiter’s melodious voice led me through a timeless play of mankind’s greatest blessing and curse – a love affair unable to be fulfilled, an outpouring of feeling too constricted by individual blocks to allow itself to flow.

After the initial anxiety and heartache experienced at the dawn of a break-up, change and renewal are sought through different means. As a woman desperately tries to leave her past behind and rebuild a new home for her soul, a new sense of awareness surfaces, and she realizes that she can’t fix the bruised relationship on her own; no matter how much love she gives, her partner is lost and has chosen to lock himself in a self-imposed prison no one but him has the key for. Lack of communication deepens the divide between her and her love, and all she can do is escape into her own comfort zone where she can heal and regroup. And that’s when her soul learns the lesson that was in front of her the whole time – life is a pattern of waves, and it is okay to abandon oneself to the currents, and even crash at times, as long as one can hold on to the ever peaceful energy of the heart.

Kiss of Eden is not a collection of happy songs, but rather it is a journey that will lead the listener to a more empowered place within the self.

Check out Kiss of Eden at cdbaby.

An Unexpected Treat

It is by chance that we met, by choice that we became friends.” ~ Author unknown


Two years ago, while I was looking for a literary agent, I set up profiles on every site that could help me get in touch with the right representative; along with the benefits of exposure, also came the less appreciated, infamous e-mails from the sites which regularly clog my inbox.

One morning, about a year or so ago, I received yet another notification of a new member signing up. Instead than deleting the message on sight - as I habitually did after I no longer needed to find an agent - that morning I felt compelled to click on the link. When the page opened, I stared at four profiles: two poets, an agent whose niche was young adult fiction, and a novelist, Renee Otis. Renee had opened a profile to either get the attention of an agent or to get suggestions from fellow writers. On her profile was a short synopsis of her novel – slave ghosts, ancient traditions, a psychic nurse, a comatose man who mentally communicated with her; in short, her novel had all the ingredients for a good story – so I wrote to her, and we began exchanging thoughts. In time, she sent me her novel to read and comment on, and I loved it! As fate had it, she soon signed up with one of my friends who had gone on to open a literary agency of her own after working as an agent assistant for a while.

The day before yesterday I had a surprise. I checked my messages and read that Renee had sent me a note on Facebook; she was coming to Raleigh for a week of training and wanted to know if we could meet. Initially, she was supposed to go to Philadelphia, but at the last minute the schedule had changed and she was sent to North Carolina.

I was very excited to meet her in person; over time we had virtually shared hopes, dreams and fears, and now we had the chance to meet face to face. We decided to meet at the hotel she stayed at, and spent a wonderful hour and a half talking over a glass of wine. If someone there was listening to us, they would have thought we had always known each other – we talked about our current projects and about the woes and wows of the publishing world, but our conversation derailed several times to other topics, and it was absolutely amazing to see how two perfect strangers who had never before met in person could be so instantly connected and comfortable with one another.

Since we both had to be up early I didn’t stay long, but we made plans to possibly get together again before she leaves town. As I drove home I thought of how strange life is sometimes, and how wonderful. If I hadn’t clicked on that link the year before, I never would have known Renee exists – though I am sure I would have discovered her later on once her amazing novel makes it to the printer – and if her company hadn’t switched schedules, it would have likely been years before we met, if indeed we were meant to meet at all.

Each day has the potential of revealing surprises that might not always be welcome, but it also reserves the right to treat us with unexpected blessings when we least expect them; the trick, I suppose, is to remain open to all we can receive.

In this case, I was blessed with the opportunity to meet someone extremely talented, with whom I share many of the same interests, whose name I will see listed some day on the New York Times list of best-selling novelists. For now, I am just happy that a link on a message led me to someone so dear.

The Rocks in the Bowl

“The secret of happiness is to count your blessings while others are adding up their troubles.” ~ Author unknown


A couple of weeks ago I read an article about a lady who keeps two bowls of river rocks on her fireplace mantel, one filled with white rocks, and one filled with darker rocks. Every time something positive happens in her day, she switches one of the dark rocks with a white one to symbolize the positive occurrence, and each time something bad happens she takes the stone out and puts it back in its original bowl.

Quite intrigued with her idea, I also filled two bowls with rocks – twenty-eight in each container to symbolize a full lunar month – and since I didn’t have any white and dark ones, I used smooth rocks and jagged pebbles. My plan was to see how many of each type I would have in the bowl after one month.

The past two weeks have been uneventful for the most part, without particularly positive or negative events – a limbo of energies – but I still managed to move rocks in response to smaller events that normally would not have caught my attention. Then, as if Universe had finally awakened from slumber and decided it was time to light a little fire under the pot to make the water boil, a string of wonderful things came to pass yesterday, and I happily switched five of the jagged rocks with smooth ones.

Last night, after everyone went to bed, I stood in front of the mantel, and I looked at the two bowls of rocks; after two weeks, even after taking some out, I have successfully switched fifteen rocks! That means that on average, even including the days when nothing particularly good happened or something unpleasant came to pass, I had witnessed at least one positive thing for each day that had passed.

By all means, they weren’t all amazing events, and some of them were in fact small victories, but what seemed important was that I never would have noticed those subtle happy moments if it hadn’t been for the fact that everything else felt ‘stuck’. Just like one doesn’t notice a warm, sunny day during the summer when the warm, sunny days are a dime a dozen, but instantly feels transported to a heavenly place if such a day occurs in the midst of a colder, rainy season, sometimes we need to slow down and feel we are traveling on low gear to notice the smaller blessings.

My mom used to always tell me and my sister that it can’t be Christmas every day, and in a way I am glad it isn’t, for this way I don’t get to bypass the small joys. And the rocks in the bowl are getting smoother with each passing day.