I gave birth to this

 

2014

 

Too Funky

Memories of dancing around my college-girl apartment. 811 Camino Pescadero #0 (yes, zero) ... the memories go on and on ...

Recent writing

After is always easier. The adrenaline flows, arrowing down your arms toward your wrists and then back up through the shoulders, into the chest, joining with your heartbeat. You sweat through your shirt. You always sweat through your shirt.

They’re down there while you read, watching you. The first thing you always do is adjust the microphone to accommodate your – let’s face it – short stature. Down there, watching you. You place your multiple-times-folded printout on the podium, run your hands down your hips for no reason other than assuring yourself of your own existence. Eyes upturned, waiting.

Taking the temperature of an audience is akin to watching the weather. Walk out and you’ll immediately know rain is on its way. Same principle with figuring out if an audience is friendly, hostile, or in that swampy ground between. Less logic, more sense. You see it in the shifting of bodies, crossing of legs, surreptitious check of cell phones. You can tell when the room heats up just that little bit, the straight backs, the forgotten purses, and you know you’ve hit a nerve.

You know from the start that the audience is receptive. They’re hushed, not quiet – those are two different things. You want them to make noise. You want them to sigh, to suck back their breath in surprise. You want them to laugh, to make that hmm noise that means you’ve struck a chord. More than anything you want them to feel, to touch them at a level they may not even realize exists within them.

Up there you can be anything, but can you really? The elements that make you malleable tend to shiver when you’re on stage. You can be anything, but you must be yourself. Whatever pieces button together to allow that, however their jagged parts come together, it is incumbent upon you to let them do just that. Neglect the need to be oneself and no one is going to listen to you for shit.

You hear yourself take one breath, then another, then start speaking.

Thanksgiving

 

One day before Thanksgiving

I'm thankful for you. You, who reads this. You, who shows interest. You, the reader. Yes, you.

Realization

It took until I was in my late 20s, but I seized the bad girl in me. Turns out she was always there. She lay in wait, smoking a cigarette, chuffing straight lines and circles. She was patient and canny. Finally she emerged.

A good read

Monica Delahooke on the things to ask for when your child is diagnosed with autism. 

A snippet

Then there’s the whole you’re-with-your-husband bit. The intimacy of sharing a glass of wine, a stroller, the child in it. The life that lies between the two of you, the home together, even the fights because they, too, are shared. You know how it feels to want that brand of intimacy. You want it for years before you ever meet Adam, feeling as though you’re pressing your nose against glass and looking in at a life you can’t even imagine inhabiting. You prefer inside to out. You prefer the intimacy to the solitude, even with its lack of control, its messy boundaries.

 

If you were on Facebook

You would know Baz is being evaluated for autism. You would also know that I'm committed to being there for him today, tomorrow, and always. You would know lots of things you can't possibly know from here. 

You also know much more by talking to me directly, by being my friend, by sharing a drink with me, even if we're wearing masks. You would know the real story if you were willing to break that wall.

All-time favorite song lyrics

I will live by my own policies

I will sleep with a clear conscience

I will sleep in peace

- Sinead O'Connor, "The Emperor's New Clothes"

Gil Fronsdal on wholeness

When we sit, when we live, and we're mostly in our thoughts, we're not whole. And if we don't engage our mind's capacity for awareness and live mostly in the body and the energies of the body, we're not whole. But bringing mind and body together to be whole and not divided from each other within ourselves is really the wonderful way, wonderful place, for our goodwill to flow, when there's no energy division within us. When we're whole, then there's lots of room for our goodness, for our kindness. Being whole, we discover there's lots of room: lots of room to receive, to experience, to take the world in so there's time for deeper wisdom and kindness to respond. That's not possible if react and are quick and fast; it's not possible if we're divided in ourselves. 

Recent writing

Then, inexplicably, a man pushing a stroller approaches. Long hair, a Dylan t-shirt, a walk seemingly free of gravity or gravitas or worry. Just one foot in front of the other, moving.

 

It is your husband.

 

They nod at each other but don’t shake hands. There is a look that passes between them. You can’t read it or perhaps don’t want to. You imagine there is almost a complicity there: you get this side of her, I get the rest. Except the argument comes over who gets which.

 

It’s an opportunity to look at the similarities, the contrasts. There are more of the latter than the former. Adam is loose, shoulders relaxed; Mac holds himself as if preparing for action. Your husband moves easily in the world – he decides long ago that he doesn’t give a fuck about what people think. Mac cares, probably too much. You relate strongly to one. The other is your husband.

 

But is that true?

 

Saying it just seems so easy: well, I relate more strongly to someone who’s not my spouse. He’s the person. He’s the connection. Easy enough when that person doesn’t see you with bad breath in the morning, sweating and shaking on the delivery table. Easy enough when you can put on your image, pull down the invisible hooded cloak of who you want to be rather than the revealing garb of what you are.

 

WordSpace Studios Residency

Man, I cannot wait to experience this. I don't know exactly when ... but it's in the works!

Yesterday

 

A great dharma talk

"Deepening the Truths We Can Say" by Diana Clark really opened me to gratitude. Definitely worth a listen. 

The Gambler

Ten o'clock. You're tired and drunk and putting the final touches on your opinion pages for the UCSB Daily Nexus. This song comes on and it's like God talking directly to you.

Woodstock's Pizza, Davis

 

Gil Fronsdal on Buddha's Six Principles of Love and Concord

It's the virtuous behavior that is liberating. We don't often see virtue, ethics, and liberation together in the same sentence. Maybe they're not so separate from each other.

Recent writing

Getting down to San Jose is a bitch. Of course, you leave after 5, after Adam gets off of work, after you’ve picked up Baz at preschool, after everything that comes before you in this world. By the time you get on the road, everyone and their brother is heading south and you’re screwed, simply screwed.

 

“It doesn’t start until 7.” Adam downshifts, then gives up and goes into first gear. You’re headed nowhere fast and your heart is starting to pulse hard. Never mind the fact that you always freak before readings, play the what-if game. You could fall, could burp in the middle, could fuck up in one of many myriad ways. Most of all you could have an audience that just hates you or worse, doesn’t get your work. When that happens you feel that your stomach is a pit unearthed in the soil, never-ending. Not that you’re dramatic in describing it at all.

 

You fiddle with the radio. It’s Super Hits of the Seventies right now, something you recognize as a band called Bread.

 

Life can be short or long

Love can be right or wrong

And if I chose the one I’d like to help me through

I’d like to make it with you

 

“Jesus,” Adam says, and flips the channel.

 

“Thanks for asking me if I wanted to listen to it.”

 

“I know you did. You loved it when you were seven. That officially means it sucks.”

 

Asshole. But he’s right. You have legendarily bad taste in music, juvenile and crass all at the same time. Or, in the case of this tune, just ridiculous.

 

Your phone tingles in your lap. I’m here, Mac writes. Where are you?

 

“Who’s that?”

 

“Mac.”

 

“Oh yeah.” Adam furrows his brow, stares at the road ahead. “Him.”

A boy and his Maizie

 

I should be in Boston doing this

Damn you, COVID. That said, I'm glad to participate in advocacy in any form. 

The FB profile-pics game

Then ... and now.

 

On Biden's speech

I think Slate kind of nailed it. Fuck fascists. I'm not reaching across the aisle to them.

That said, of course I'm thrilled at the election results. I practically screamed myself hoarse on Saturday morning. Shit, who didn't? 

Well, I know a few.

Boogie Oogie Oogie

It's a disco sort of morning. My blogging class went well last night and I feel like celebrating. Tonight Marisa and I kick off our Marketing class and I'm super excited about it -- I've never co-taught before and Marisa is the one to do it with. Then Baz has no school on Wednesday and I'm probably way more thrilled than him about that.

Still processing therapy. I've often told Adam that it takes a few days to really get to the meat of what I've talked about. It's good, though. It's good.

Intense therapy session

Still processing, which is a good sign. I think if you walk out of a therapy session and aren't still processing a few hours -- or days -- later, you should rethink your choice in therapists. 

Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Carmel

 

Facebook Memories, 2012

"I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us, so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting." - Barack Obama

Just written

Adam is watching you, a line of inquiry between his brows.

 

“I didn’t say anything,” you say, idiotically.

 

His face carries a what? expression.

 

“You’re always there.” Your voice, your feet, digging in. The resentment, the acute awareness. Leave me alone. Let me be.

 

His face, collapsing into hurt. Ah, shit. Adam doesn’t often betray feelings, but today cannot be denied. His mouth, turned down slightly, reminds you of Baz, that slight quiver. Are those tears? Fuck-fuck-fuck. You need to say something, get your lazy ass up out of the chair, give him a hug, remind him how much he means to you, how much you love him.

 

“Oh,” you say, “come on.”

 

Bitch. You are a bitch. The moment feels frozen, icicles hanging from its edges. How to get over yourself and reach out to him? How to vault the transom, even for a single second?

 

He shakes his head, walks away. It feels like a victory and yet even that sweetness on your tongue is bitter.

 

You are caught, so caught. You are stuck, trapped, gasping for air in a tight pocket.

 

Do you ever want to be a mother? A wife? When you are twenty-two and graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara, you want nothing more than to inhabit some hell-forsaken garret in New York, to scratch out words while ducking the landlord month after month. It’s romantic, yes, but it’s also something more: a dream that will take you years to even recognize is achievable. As a newly minted graduate, you don’t think it’s possible. How in the hell can you relocate to New York, get the money to even find that garret? You don’t want eight roommates in the middle of Queens. You just don’t. You want your own space, your own tiny territory, and so in the end you forsake the idea for something entirely different: you move to North Platte, Nebraska to take a job as a wire editor at a rural newspaper. The Telegraph covers 13 counties, one of which is so small that if you call the operator and ask for Buck, you won’t need to give a last name.

Tracy Chapman, "Telling Stories"

There is fiction in the space between

Lines on your page and memories

Write it down but it doesn't mean

We're not just telling stories

Election and Monterey

Who hasn't been exhausted this week? I sure as hell have been. That's why I'm taking off for Monterey this weekend. Damn it, I need it. A room with a fireplace and some fucking quiet. Now we're talking.

Apropos of nothing, the song that got me to Tokyo years ago.