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7th Heaven: A Day in Maia Spa

May 7, 2014 by Sandra Hanks

Some days are better than others, and some are so spectacularly better they deserve an entire post dedicated to their spectacularness.

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Maia Spa

This has been one of those days.

Let me begin by stating unequivocally that I SO deserve this day … ‘nuff said.
Going into detail about just why I’m deserving of hours of luxurious pampering would only serve to dent this almost transcendental state I’m enjoying for as long as I can keep it going, and you already know how life can suck so there’s no reason to go there.

Here are the magic words that made a Wednesday in May wonderful:

Maia Luxury Resort and Spa

Seychelles has a few 5 Star+ resorts and Maia is the jewel in the crown. Award-winning and consistently listed as one of the best hotels in the world by every globally recognized travel publication and tourism organization, it is beautiful with attention paid to every detail and an atmosphere of peaceful exclusivity.

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Maia Attention to Detail

The hotel serves only its guests, so opportunities to luxuriate in Maia environs are rare for most people in Seychelles. I, however, am not most people. (Okay … most days I am very much ‘most people’, but today I was special.)

Here’s how my Wednesday unfolded:

After dropping the kids for their trip to school at 6:15, I returned home for coffee, yogurt and a bit of work. I then drove the 15 or so minutes to Maia where I pulled up at the gate, flashed a smile, and was admitted … after the security guy made a phone call.

I was greeted in the Welcome Pavilion by the gracious Mr. Georges, a manager of long standing with Maia, who escorted me to the Maia Spa where I was served cool juice as my feet soaked in scented water and I was asked to choose from a selection of heavenly oils, then led to an amazingly comfy message bed.

For the next hour I was pampered and pummeled in equal measure, a most pleasurable experience I could easily live with as a daily occurrence.

That done, I was slightly rearranged as it was my face’s turn to be gently indulged for another hour in ways I’m sure took a year or three off this old visage.

Soon after deciding I was NEVER leaving, I was served the most delicious chilled glass of juices I’ve ever tasted and a bowl of fresh fruits … kiwi, melon, pineapple, etc. … in a lovely alcove surrounded by garden and water and bird calls.

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After-pamper refreshment … Maia Style

I may not have left if champaign and sashimi with great company had not been on offer, but it was, so I did.

Many thanks to Maia’s General Manager, Ernst Ludik, and to Georges Gravé for the day and the terrific conversation.

I’d be very happy to do this day again …

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Champers and Mimosa …

“Like” Maia on facebook to see more …

Posted in Seychelles, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments »

The Six Senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and non …

May 6, 2014 by Sandra Hanks

ImageHave I mentioned the ghost sitting on my roof?

Apparently … or is that apparitionalyly? … it’s just Sydney, my dead neighbor. Not that anyone has ever actually seen a wispy version of a long-departed guy perching near my rain gutter, but that hasn’t stopped the story from spreading from Anse Soleil to Baie Lazare like an invasive creeper.

Like many islands and much of Africa, Seychelles, being an island AND African, enjoys a casual familiarity with ghosts and gris gris. Although steps are routinely taken to keep the number of zombies (locally known as ‘dandotia‘ to a minimum, it seems there are few effective methods for keeping the wraiths away. Believe me, if I could find a spell that would convince the people around here that disembodied Sydney had moved on to a more comfy spot than my hot tin roof, I would put it to use. Not that I’m much bothered by the idea of a rooftop phantom neighbor, but the kankan makes it difficult to find someone willing to walk down my road to cut my grass.

Although it seems silly … and it’s been no few times I’ve watched people scoff with horror attempting a skepticism they so don’t feel … far be it from me to insist on a non-existence of spirit beings. Heck, for all I know we’re surrounded by them all the time, just as we go through life unaware (thankfully) of all the mites, viruses, bacteria and such that inhabit everything and take every opportunity to become one with us. Not to say I believe we die and turn to dust mites, although that is more likely than growing wings and strumming harps given decomposition and all, as the idea of Sydney morphing into millions of tiny bits that could infest my mattress is just too gross to consider. Perceiving the unseen, the unknown and the unknowable may or may not be within the realm of human potential. ESP and other notions of connections with a higher consciousness have been debated for centuries, so who am I to point a finger and laugh?

Someone whose grass needs cutting, that’s who.

And, yes, I am keeping with the date theme that started with May the 4th (be with you), but may have to shift gears as the month goes on. Tomorrow, however, I will be spending the day in 7th Heaven, so watch this space.

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Pleading the Fifth

May 5, 2014 by Sandra Hanks

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History is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man. <

                                                                    ~Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

Yesterday, the fourth was with us. Today, the revenge of the fifth, but aside from that almost sad reach for the Star(Wars) and being rather fun to say, ‘fifth’  looks weird and is fun to say.

 

Try it:

Fifth, fifth, fifth, fifth, fifth.

 

Dribbling yet?

 

Historically, the Cinco de Mayo has more going for it than jokes about BestFoods in a basin and a colorful Mexican holiday. 

 

In actual fact, the condiment, like the Irish county, is pronounced “mā-ō”, and the holiday originated with Mexican-American communities in the American West as a way to commemorate the cause of freedom and democracy during the first years of the American Civil War. (Mexico’s Independence Day is el dieciseis de septiembre … much harder to convert into a photo meme.)

 

It was on the 5th of May in 1862 the Mexican forces loyal to Benito Juarez defeated troops sent by Napoleon III in the Battle of Puebla. Coincidentally, it was also on a 5th of May, in 1821, that Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile on the island of St. Helena, so we might say that el cinco de Mayo doesn’t sound so good in French.

 

Also on this day the 13th Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery (1865), Jesse Owens set the long jump record (1935), Holland and Denmark were liberated from the Nazis (1945), Alan Shepard became the first American in space (1961) and Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, John B. Stetson (the hat guy) and Michael Palin were born.

 

Funny thing about dates … 

 

They’re arbitrary, not real things in any real way … as Einstein said: an illusion.

 

“People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”  

                                              ~ Albert Einstein

 

When the earth was flat and lives were shorter, chariots were sometimes thought to be the vehicles of the rising sun, yet now we’re on a globe NOT at the center of the universe … but what’s a couple of thousand years in the grand scheme? Not even an eye blink.

 

But how else are we puny humans, chained as we are to our biological forms and reliant on biochemical actions and reactions, to sort out our perception of the world around us?

 

Imagine the confusion if every 5th of May Napoleon Bonaparte died at the same time the 3rd Napoleon got his ass kicked in Mexico! Sacré blue! The French would never stand for such a thing.

 

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” 

                                                                               ~ Albert Einstein

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments »

Long Ago in a Cinema Far Far Away

May 4, 2014 by Sandra Hanks

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On a warm morning in May of1980 I was living in Sacramento, California. My kids were 11 and 9 at the time. (The same ages Sam and Cj are now.) Because I considered it a prime duty to raise them right, I kept them out of school, knowing the experience gained that day would resonate for decades longer than a lesson in long division.

 

The day grew hotter as we stood in a very long line for a very long time, but we’d prepared well, had plenty of water and no shortage of amusement in the queue.

 

The venue was the Century Complex. The event, the first showing of “The Empire Strikes Back”.

 

The film, of course, was brilliant. It introduced us to Yoda and we exited with our heads full of deep meaning, confusion and lines that within days had been grafted on to daily conversation.

 

“THAT is why you fail.”

 

“There is no try.”

 

“Luke! It’s a trap!”

 

“I love you.” “I know.”

 

My brother was in New York, so had seen the movie a few hours before the time had come on the west coast. He’s a ‘no spoiler’ kind of guy, so kept mum, but was chomping at the bit to share the experience and waiting by the phone for a call from us to rehash what we’d just seen.

 

New York audiences, being a bit more elaborate in their reactions, were not holding back, and my bro was most impressed with the reaction to the penultimate scene:

 

<Darth Vader: No, I am your father.

 

NYC audience: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

There was about an hour of long distance back-and-forth over what various plot twists and hints might mean for the next installment … Who did Yoda mean when he told what was left of Obi Wan, “… there is another”? Was Vader lying? Would Lando and Chewy find Han? Would they someday be making “Han Solo-incased-in-carbonite coffee tables”?</a> (Okay, that one didn’t occur to any of us until decades later.)

 

Yes, all those questions were answered in a follow-up that included Ewoks, but it took some time for that to happen. In between that then and the then that was walking out of the movie on that day in May made movie-making history and changed the culture of imagination forever.

 

That is why on this day, I say:

May the 4th be with you …

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

Surviving in Seychelles

May 3, 2014 by Sandra Hanks

Yep. I’m still here. Back-in-the-saddle

I won’t lie; it’s not been an easy few years, but I continue to survive. The process of reading back over old posts has brought back much of the journey I’ve been wandering and I have to admit I’m glad I wrote at least a bit about some of the shit-filled puddles I’ve slogged through. It serves to remind me that I can … survive, that is … and to appreciate the far clearer, far cleaner path I now tread.

Gone are the dregs of ex-husbands, Latino musicians and other unpleasant tastes that lingered. Old friends are still with me and wonderful new people are now enriching my life in unexpected ways.

To catch you up a bit, I’m fine. The kids are great and much bigger than they used to be. They continue to be wonderful, smart, funny, kind, caring and gorgeous and I continue to be blessed by the gift that is them.

I have been working, but most of the writing done has been for other people with the wisdom to understand their own lack of skill … and for dosh, of course. Social media management has kept me busy and up-to-date on many things I might have otherwise missed, and two new clients are such a joy to work with that I may never stop.

As some may know, I had another radio gig. It was a hoot and I enjoyed the people I worked with, but the station could only afford me for a while.

And, yes, I am still in Seychelles.

The country has changed a lot over the years. There are now real supermarkets and more than one traffic light, but still no fast food franchises, thankfully. The Internet is faster and more reliable, but expensive and still nowhere near ‘real world’ speed. There are more hotels and ginormous houses, more private jets flying in, more humongous yachts. Heroin is taking a toll on those too stupid to understand its consequences, so crime is up. Almost everyone has a smart phone and most houses are hooked up to sat TV. In other words, like just about everywhere else in the world.

In the wider world adoption has become less an option for children in many countries. As the rich get richer Pearl S. Buck’s account of the effects of that become ever more worrying. The USA has apparently become the country of the greedy and the stupid, the world’s religions are getting progressively more desperate and middle ground seems to be vanishing on all fronts.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments »

Back on the air …

September 16, 2013 by Sandra Hanks

Back on the air …

After some years, I have a new radio gig. It’s live streamed, so international listeners can tune in via purefm.sc … and I do take requests.

 

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Old Autocrats Never Fade Away … They Just Die

March 10, 2013 by Sandra Hanks

DeadguyThere’s nothing new about trying to keep old, dead iconic autocrats around; the Egyptians came close to perfecting the process more than 3,000 years ago, after all. What differs now is the lack of the bling, the box and pointy building.

These days there seems to be the thought that people will actually yearn to be very close to a lifeless corpse and to lament the lost leader while gaping at said corpse forever. Hugo Chavez is the next despot in line for non-desposal. Being somewhat iconic in life, someone apparently figures displaying the icon rather than burying it six feet under will render it (not in the candle sense, please, although my guess is that would shed more light on more subjects than a carcass) somehow still tenacious.

Yes, Chavez will soon join the ranks of Mao, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Ferdinand Marcos, Eva Peron and the Kims … father and son, both Il in life, both dead-but-not-gone, Jong and Sung … on display, like Roy Roger’s horse. (Russia offered Stalin The Stiff as a side show until 1961 when he was finally buried as part of a move to “un-Stalinize” the country, figuring, I suppose, that out of sight is out of mind.)

I have had the dubious honor of filing past the perpetually present corpse of Mao, an experience fraught with emotion … but not the sort it was designed to inspire.

It was 1989, just a couple of weeks before the soon-to-be-deadly protests started in Beijing. I was in China with my nineteen-year-old daughter, out and about to see the sites. At that time, it was required visitors be guided, both physically and with the intent to lead them toward unreasonable conclusions. On our way to visit Tiananmnen Square, our chaperone explained our upcoming experience.

“You will now have the great pleasure to see the most famous exhibit in all the world,” she said in heavily accented not-quite-Chinglish. “Millions of people come every day to see what you are about to see.”

We waited for it …

“THE MOUSE MEMORIAL!”

At least that’s what Jenn and I heard.

It took a few minutes to realize that the queue of Chinese peasants stretching for some distance … four abreast, equal distance apart, eerily silent … were having their places pushed back some so we tourists from the decadent West could officially cut in front to enter Mao’s Memorial.

Well … sorry propaganda machine of the government of the People’s Republic, but there was no way in hell we Californian’s had not already constructed a working version vision of Mickey Maos.

We had previously visited the Beijing Zoo (Remind me to write a post about that nightmare someday.), so weren’t expecting much in the way of quality, but were a bit surprised at the lavishness on the inside of the square, squat building. It was posh in the way that flash-over-substance always is and filled with enormous bouquets of white chrysanthemums in garish vases. The military was well represented with dozens of uniformed men holding automatic weapons and standing at attention. (My daughter got off the line of the day when she noticed the Red Army wears white socks.)

Reserving pride of place amongst a bazillion flowers sat a glass-domed casket inside of which lay the perpetually rigid corpse of Mao Zedong.

He wasn’t looking so good.

Being that we entered the place with certain images already in mind, could we help it if the thoughts and whispers we shared had to do with what the Disney people could have done with him? He’d be sitting up and waving at the crowd, perhaps even pacing the floor like Lincoln on Main Street instead of simply assuming the position of the waxy, fake-looking lump of whatever he might actually be after all the years … not that he was a particularly attractive man when he could still walk under his own power, but obvious inches of pancake re-dos hadn’t helped. (Here’s an explanation … sort of … on how he was made up.)

Laughing was definitely out with all those guns and properly inculcated citizens of the PRC around and stifling our giggles took a LOT of self control, but we certainly had no problem going along with the no-photos-no-videos rules. Since we’d passed on the offer to buy flowers to add to the heaps, we meandered by with our hands over our mouths and swallowed our chuckles until we made it to the other side.

And now Chavez is in the perfect position for the same treatment … if trocars and formaldehyde can be considered treatment … and legions of the faithful, the morbid and the amused will be filing by as he continues to be dead.

Personally, I hope someday to rest in peace, not in public … it’s just so TACKY.

Posted in Celebs, History, My Chinese Checkered Past, World politics | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

Thursday With Lori … ACK!

March 7, 2013 by Sandra Hanks

Twain quoteWell, hello! I know it’s been a while … about a year and a half since my last post on this blog … and although I’ve been grateful to the nagging readers as they did their best to prompt a bit of writing here, I’ve had neither the time nor the inclination to blah, blah, blog.

An experience last night, however, set fingers to keyboard as I was forced to recall just how important it sometimes is to watch idiots twitch and sputter no matter how futile the activity so often is.

The inspiration for this post is Lori Carangelo, a screech from the distant past I’d had the pleasure of forgetting … until last night when she apparently learned how a search engine works and found a blog post from 2007 and decided to try to chew my face off with her wrath … and show off her writing skills at the same time.

Of course, she has a book she’s trying to flog, so most of the comments included a sales link in amongst the ridiculous blather. Fine by me, as anyone silly enough to actually pay real money for poor punctuation, bad spelling and nonsense either deserves what they get or will see she’s done the work of showing what a moron she is all by her lonesome.

Feel free to read her comments I allowed to post, and my responses, and if you can figure out what actual points she’s trying to make … well … you must have some sort of super power that sees through stupid.

Although I’m guessing she has a blog, the way they work and the concept of moderating comments seems to have escaped her. One long ramble not posted takes issue with me referring to her as “Honey” in a reply, so the idea that this is my blog she’s plopped herself into, a fact that conveys upon me the right to call anyone “Honey” if I so desire, must be beyond her. She also took to accusing my children of being terrorists, mentioning assault weapons and drones FFS!, which is more shit than I’ll allow anyone to throw at a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old.

On the moderation thing …

I rarely filter comments, choosing almost all of the time to approve what comes and let the chips fall where they may. As I slept last night, a flurry of them came in from her, each wackier than the last. Now, I’m no fan of hers, but I’m also not a cruel person, so opted not to publish the comments she sent overnight. Should anyone think this was an attempt to edit her, it was for her own good.

One small example in a screen shot so no one thinks I’m making this up …

Carcarangelo comment

No way I’m posting any more of that stuff than necessary to make the point …

On the adoption front, over the years I have made it very clear that I am a strong advocate of ethical adoption, that I favor children having families over some horrible alternatives, that I support all efforts to open records, believe that everything possible should be done to rid the world of poverty, cruelty, war, greed and selfishness, all of which impact children, and I don’t suffer fools.

Now …

I’ll suggest Lori Carangelo stop spiking the Ensure, become friendly with her meds and stop haranguing those who don’t agree that adoption creates mass murderers.

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy | Tagged , | 11 Comments »

“Memory” for 1,000, please, Alex …

February 24, 2012 by Sandra Hanks

A: Every useless bit ever mentally digested pops up even decades later.

Q: What is really fucking annoying?

I have a prodigious memory, one that recalls without prompts everything from the profoundly impactive to the ridiculously trivial and much in between. I remember names, events and circumstances leading to them, jokes, phone numbers, all the verses of the Mr. Ed theme song … and a zillion other bits of pop culture … recipes, teachers, lessons, and much more going back now a very long way.

It sometimes comes in handy, and as the depository for life’s detritus in my family my brothers can find me useful. At other times, however, it is just fucking annoying.

Take last night for example …

I’m trying to get my head to slow down enough to drift off to sleep when I’m suddenly conjuring images of the guy in the photo at the top of this post and wondering what ever happened to Commando Cody.

While sleep evades, I recall buzzing around a living room with arms outstretched, then reaching down to punch an imagined communicator button where a lapel pin might go, cocking my head toward my chest and sending messages as I fly from the couch and run patterns on a braided rug as a little brother tries to mimic the antics.

Because I can, I Google ‘Commando Cody’, find images I instantly recognize and the disturbing information that this was a TV show that aired 12 episodes over a period of two months in 1955.

I was FOUR.

NBC, weekly, Saturdays, 11:00 to 11:30 AM, July 16 to October 8, 1955 …

Two years after their (very unsuccessful) theatrical release, the 12 films were sold to NBC, which ran them during the late summer and fall of 1955, only after all other space adventure TV programs had vanished completely from the air.

What else is locked up in this head of mine that might seep out in the dark of night? If recall of not only the sights and sounds, but also the true title and lead character of a TV show that was barely a blip on the radar of entertainment for an eye blink of time when I was four-years-old can slide from a cranial fold into conscious thought fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus more than half a century later it’s a wonder I ever get any sleep.

Posted in Family, History, My Chinese Checkered Past, On getting older | Tagged , , | 26 Comments »

Another one bites the dust …

December 31, 2011 by Sandra Hanks

Years come and go and like with many that have rolled around lately this year I can’t tell which I dislike the most: the coming or the going.

New Year’s Eve is a turning point and I can almost not remember the last time I didn’t spend a portion of the event not engaging in an internal debate over what was more depressing — the year I just went through or the one I’m facing. (I know that’s a lot of negatives, but ’tis the season … )

Since none of my children died in 2011, it certainly wasn’t the worst I’ve seen, but there wasn’t much else to rejoice over. For the most part it’s been a 365-day slog with far-too-regular, far-too-often-futile attempts at dodging incoming shit asteroids.

Yep. So much like last year that I could just repost the blog I wrote as 2010 closed out, but I’m just that much older and that much more jaded, so less inclined to end on the up-note I managed then.

One more year of the disappointment parade has me beat to a pulp. Having managed to whip up anticipation of breakthroughs and opportunities to grab a brass ring or two, in retrospect I have to wonder how any glimmer of optimism ever managed to reflect off dreary, dull surfaces in the first place. How flickers of hope appeared in such soggy, dismal ground is a mystery.

I know. I know. New beginnings … anything’s possible … if I set my mind to it … blah, blah, blah … or as Anne Lamott put it: Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.

Experience, however, has me turn more toward Nietzshe when it comes to hope:

In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man’s torments.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Since my dawns are usually accompanied by anxiety, dread and a case of the shakes that lets me know I am, indeed, awake, if I were to hold some hope somewhere I would like it to take more the shape of a good night’s sleep, and prolonging torments sounds less constructive than admitting defeat.

I’m tired, you see: tired of working my ass off for zero return; tired of trying to mold a world around me that refuses to go anything but pear-shaped; tired of convincing myself a better day is in the making only to take another load of shit to the head; tired of pretending there’s anything within my control to change for the positive. Tired to the point of no longer being able to work up a head of steam or care enough about anything to form an opinion worth writing about.

Plans turn to dust at my feet, so I now just duck and cover as best I can while working on a “don’t give a shit” stance that might at least allow me to keep standing between hits. It’s not a case of damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t because there’s little I have options to either do or don’t do.

One thing I can and do do is try to find the lessons in this life and own up to my role in my demise. No doubt about it, I’ve made some crappy choices, been too harsh, too opinionated, too defensive. I’ve neglected relationships that should have been cultivated and cultivated some that didn’t deserve the efforts. I have a sharp tongue that defensively masks a damaged heart and forces distance that would be better bridged. I harbor resentments and forget nothing, so carry toxins and use them as excuses. Although generous with joy, I am selfish with misery, a trait that is a setup for loneliness. I am intolerant, short-fused and overly-impressed with my propensity to be right.

Dwelling on my faults, as active a venture as that is, does little to give hope, however, as I don’t see the basic me changing much in the time I have left. I do my best to practice kindness, to contribute in positive ways, to keep my fucking mouth shut, but am nonetheless still subject to the knee-jerk reflexes of a lifetime.

Of course, it’s not all bad. Sam and Cj keep me going, giving good reason to get up, get moving and put on a happy face. They keep me laughing on the outside as I agonize over how to keep them motivated, happy and secure, pay their school fees, provide for their futures and answer all the questions I have answers to as Mark disappears into his new life and adds to their long list of losses. They are what make regrets impossible and my constant reminder that things do happen for a reason.

Looking backward down my path, it does all make sense, one-thing-leading-to-another-to-another-to-here, and there’s not one thing I would change as I’d fear altering the present reality. But that doesn’t mean this reality is any less sucky on a day-to-day, year-by-year basis or that I’m any less tired or scared or worried.

Any more questions on why I haven’t been writing here much? Whiny poor-me-life-sucks posts bore the shit out of me, especially when they’re written by me, and since I have little else to say I’m shutting up as I’m shutting down.

If I had hope left, I’d pump it up about now, grab at my disintegrated bootstraps and yank. As it is, however, I’ll keep an eye out for a set of jangling keys to divert me from my funk and call that ringing in the New Year.

As for hope, this is about the best I can do …

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
~T.S. Eliot

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 38 Comments »

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