The Chiffon Trenches

Love must be kind, and it must be a two-way street. Loyalty between two persons in an alliance of true friendship is a noble human endeavor. In true friendship, a human being finds strength. Good times or bad; the highest peak or the lowest valley in one’s life.

On holidays, I cave in to the memory of love, and associate desserts and eating with the love I experienced at my grandmother's table. She was a great cook, and sweets crowded the side console cabinet during Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have no answer as to how to overcome this. I will try until I die, every day. Just keep trying to be well. Enough said.

the blues every day when we wake up. Good morning, heartache, I rise, yes I rise, thank God. Hope lives. You must wake up and create your own miracles every day. I went through my life on the strength of hope, and the memory of my ancestors, and the people who showed me unconditional love. There’s no sunny day, yet there is sunshine in my life. You have to hope. It’s a dangerous and perilous tightrope walk, and yet you must rise to meet the day.

thing about Andy is that he was truly inclusive. Diversity was never an issue; he wanted you to be special. I was lucky to have that kind of acceptance in the early stages of my career. He was one of the great twentieth-century artists, and his legacy will continue to astonish.

retreated into my fears like a turtle retreating into his carapace. Love has not been in my life in any degree. I never learned how to maintain strong self-worth when it came to two people getting down, literally clinging to each other. Yet, I have found love in little interludes of innocence or wonderful, life-enhancing bonds, and friendships that grew out of respect, affection, and admiration. I have had many emotional highs and definite lows when it comes to love and romance, and yet I am alone.

There was so much freedom in those boots, enough to make me realize I still felt restricted, restrained by my upbringing. People in North Carolina were not outside-the-box thinkers; they were straight, rigid, and judgmental. And now here I was, in Paris, discovering these fascinating people, and yes, I felt liberated in certain ways, but I did not feel totally free.