Hey folks…I guess it’s Family Week because here’s that guest entry from my mom I kept telling you all about. She says she thinks she writes like me, but I think I write like her. You decide. And here she is!
- For my guest entry on Ampersand I would like to sing the praises of the Emerald City and invite everyone to ululate along in celebration of their favorite fabulous belly dancer. ?
Seattle is truly a magical place: full of gardens, loaded with roses, laden in glorious fresh vegetables, welling with berries, and bursting with belly dancers. For scientific interest, the Locks in Ballard offer you scores of several species of jumping live salmon that you can see diving, swooping, leaping and jumping their hearts out through a grueling series of fish steps up the fish ladder that take them past the locks and back to their very own rivers of origin to lay their eggs and die. This year is a very big year for the salmon run and so many are being counted on their way upstream that the chances are good that Seattleites will be able to fish for salmon from Lake Washington this year – the salmon spend a few months swimming and jumping around in the lake before they continue upstream. The locks were great, the jumping fish were great, the lock control people were very polite and helpful even it one did divulge that he was on an 8-hour shift with no break, but the best thing about the locks is that they are accompanied by a big garden. The zoo is also great and is home to a large and very gorgeous rose garden that is free to the wandering public. Seattle is so great. I woke up every morning on the purple futon to look out a big picture window into a blue (or sometimes gray in the morning) sky, an apple tree with baby apples, and of course an old garden blooming away with several colors of roses, an enormous white lily, peonies, hydrangeas, butterfly bushes, hostas, and ever more roses.?
The other highpoint of my stay was the Middle-Eastern Dance Festival with a ton of vendors selling silk harem pants, very big sparkly bras, saris, sheer embroidered overlays, veils of all kinds, lots of wild colors and patterns to layer on the bottom, plenty of bells, tassels, belts, scarves, and coin belts, and lots of very fancy tops to show your belly. On the stage there was a continuous sequence of dancers of all kinds: solos, duets, and groups of all description. I preferred the “Tribal” as opposed to the “Cabaret” – more layers and some great crazy make-up involving a black line drawn down the chin. As soon as I arrived and began to recover my poise in the midst of the visual onslaught, the crowd began to applaud the dancers not by polite clapping or enthusiastic “woo-woo-woo” but by ululating – making this fantastic sound with their mouths and tongues that sounded straight from the remote desert and brought tears to my eyes. No kidding. It took me a minute before I could speak. It is such an elemental sound-so wild and female. I loved it and spent the rest of the afternoon practicing and praising and generally carrying on, all the while seated politely wearing my nice blue linen dress from France. For those of you who were wondering, Chiara’s troupe was the best. Her costume was stunning and her group was the best organized of all. Instead of sort of drifting onto the stage and looking around, each member made a dramatic entrance and struck a pose, gradually building this fantastic centerpiece of a group – a renaissance portrait, I believe it was referred to. So dramatic and beautifully presented, and everyone looking so thrilled to be dancing. Chiara was radiant and glowing. I got to see her really belly dance for the first time – her own choreography to boot. The veil work may be my favorite part of belly dance, although the undulations are hard to resist. I loved it that she had a scarf around her hair and jewelry on her forehead. I also love coin belts; Chiara jingles as she walks-make that sways. No, make that shimmies. These belly dancers know how to costume themselves and the great thing is that each one makes her own personalized costume. Each costume is unique and individualized, even if it is following a group theme. What fun. I got to sew some silver bangles on Chiara’s top – last time it was pearls. So hard to decide which I like best. ?
So to all you possible inhabitants of the purple futon – you will have a hard time having more fun that I did.
Chiara’s Mom
Isn’t she great? Thanks, Mom! Thanks for my ironing board too…I haven’t used it since you left, but I promise I will soon! Was that some sort of hint, by the way, buying that for me? Okay, people who plan to come visit me, you now have your work cut out for you if you want your guest entries to be as nice as this one. Of course, they might not all be as complimentary towards me as this one has been, but what do you want? It’s my mom! (For the record, by the way, she never actually said she was going to send any My Little Ponies to the glue factory, when we were little. I just beefed that part up a little for the story).