How To Find A Good Man Who Doesn't Want Kids

Winter Update: Pacific Northwest Photos

2011-12-12T16:16:00.000-08:00

Voo Doo Donuts in Portland

I went eating up and down Southern California for Thanksgiving. I gained about three pounds during the day, but in the morning, I'd be back down to size, ready to start up again. Heave!

Greeter in Seattle

Last weekend, I went to the tailor to pick up my dress, and I parked a few blocks down. Walking through the garment district downtown is so quirky and feel-good in a down-and-out way. An old man in a three piece suit greeted me, "Hello, my friend!" On the way back when I passed him again, he was cleaning his dentures in a small cottage cheese bucket filled with water. A woman saw me holding my dress and called me over, wanted to tell me it was beautiful. As I got to my car, a man hollered from across the street, "I like your dress!" I yelled back, Thanks! "You a model?" No, I smiled. "YES you are! Yes YOU are!" My extra marsupial pouch I've developed to tuck into more food was undoubtedly well camouflaged.

Lost dog in Seattle

In other news, wow, there is so little news. I've been house sitting my favorite house and resident cat again, but seeing as I'm so heavy, it's been difficult to get comfortable on the various couches. I'm like a walrus tossing and turning on a small buoy. The cat doesn't mind. A walrus is real warm, and a cat can avoid crushing seismic flips throughout the night.

Japanophiles in Portland

OMG. OMG. I did something in the middle of composing this post. I went OUT! I went drinking and dancing and carousing til 2:30 in the morning. That's breaking a ten-month streak of homebodyness. Hells ya! I drank so much whiskey and beer I almost hurled. I don't think I've done that in 20 years. Unfortunately, I was wearing a bright yellow puffy ski jacket to work that day, so I looked like a giant bumble bee. Various co-workers had to pretend to be my man to swat away unwelcome dancer uppers. You know, the guy who dances up on you and then when you scoot your ass away, grabs your hand, and by way of come on, says, "I tried to dance with you!" Yes, yes you did. Wooo, I feel ALIVE. We hugged, we yelled, we took pictures, we crossed streets, we got hit by water balloons, we lost our phones, YEAAAH!! I feel like a gazillion dollars. I got wasted!! I think that's the first hangover I've ever had. From alcohol.

Japanese garden in Portland

The company holiday party is coming up, and this year's a Mad Men theme. Rad, right? I am knee deep in vintage analysis. There are so many directions you could go with this. Late 50's or early 60's? Pampered, bored housewife in the suburbs or office bombshell? Kelly bag or clutch? Long or short? Did you know that in the 50's when they figured out how to make non-seamed stockings, women weren't really sure if they were into it? So, Hanes kept making both; it was ladies' choice. This lady has too many choices and hopes that after these last couple themed parties, she can get back to work blogging and writing instead of drooling over Etsy.

Oh great, now I am sick at home. Too much partying?! I just partied once? Should've worked up to it. Hope everyone is staying warm and well-fed.

DIY Khaleesi Daenerys Targaryan from HBO's Game of Thrones

2011-11-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

Boy, there is a lot of catching up to do. First off, I have to post my Halloween costume DIY because it is already November. Lookie here:

Target outfit, with modified midriff so as to be comfortable at work. (Courtesy HBO)

For those of you who haven't seen the show/read the books yet, this character here is badass. SPOILERS: She starts out as ingenue princess bait that her brother uses to gain an army of wild horse-riding barbarians by giving her away as bride to large, ferocious, and super hot leader of horse-riding barbarians. Then slowly she gains his trust and love via good sex and guts. And then she's tried by tragic loss of fierce, hot husband and unborn baby due to backstabbing witch. Only to rise from glory from her husband's funeral pyre, which she had walked into, as supernaturally fire-proof queen surrounded by recently unfossilized dragons, commanding remaining horse people on her own. No, I've only been to Comicon once.

Detail of upholstery fabric bought at Michael Levine.

Suede also.

Aging of suede with coffee, tea, ashes. Did not follow all aging instructions from Lord of the Rings forum.

Hand sewing going on.

Really crappy hand sewing.

Although I was proud to have figured out how to alleviate bunching at the back of my top by cutting slits and adding triangular leather to the bottom.

Pieces of hardware from ebay and etsy, replica Viking cloak pins and Celtic torq made by enterprising Hungarian or Australian.

Vintage purse reminiscent of Khaleesi's husband's horse pants.

Husband Khal Drogo. (Courtesy HBO probably too)

Voila. Violet contacts not visible. Wig braiding more difficult than imagined.

Khaleesi eating lunch at her desk. The white stole is made from one piece of fur called Mongolian. Mongolian what, they couldn't tell me.

98% of party attendees were not aware of who this character was. But maybe in a couple years, you will be able to buy the stripper version!

The Same But Different

2011-10-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about being the Other, having considered some feedback I got on my work in my online writing class. It's a classic story line, the not fitting in, the underdog, the foreigner, the half-breed. The thing is, as Americans, we might all want to be Other. We want to be different and individual and unique. We all have our stories about how we were Other and how hard it was to be that way and isn't it great now that we have grown up and realize the asymmetry of our own snowflake is the very secret to our beauty? But the thing is, everybody identifies with that story, our Otherness is a commonality. I wonder if in other countries, they don't necessarily want to be Other, they might want to be a certain type or they might want to be same but different.

A friend of mine is getting messages from a Colombian dating site because there is somebody with the same name as him out there who is into Colombian girls. I was fascinated by the way the Colombian girls described themselves as a particular type. They were either "affectionate and sincere" ones or "uncomplicated" ones. The hot ones apparently describe themselves as "happy." Also there are "little" women. Are these types that actually exist or are these some kind of defensive declaration against a preconceived notion that Colombian men have about Colombian women being crazy, depressive, and gadunkadunk? I don't know! How do women declare themselves here? I glanced through Salon personals just now, and we appear to want to be both of everything. We are girls next door who are sexy too. We are many-sided diamonds in the rough. We are stripper librarians. Super complicated, cool, funny, serious, adventurous, home bodies. Me too!

Which reminds me, our neighborhood version of Christina Ricci cat came the closest to me that she has ever dared. She is a wild thing, always having babies and not being catchable enough to be fixed. Can you tell that she's pretty? She's difficult to photograph and perhaps pregnant again.

The other thing about the Other is that we get all huffy when there's another one of us around. That's why there's a Charlotte and a Samantha and a Carrie and the other one in your group of friends. It's hard to have the same type in one gang. You are much more liable to run into another you when there are more people around, like in school, which is why you might recall all those evil twins and frenemies from your youth. Even if you have eliminated other you's in your adulthood, they are all still out there, in the world. I never felt so demoralized as when I was trying to be an actress for a year or so in my twenties, and I'd audition for a part as an Asian news broadcaster, and there would be a hundred other me's, all with our Connie Chung hair and crepe suiting. I didn't love acting enough to live like that.

But now, as I'm trying to craft stories, maybe all the other me's is exactly who I should be thinking about. Maybe it isn't that I have to stand out as a special me. Maybe what I want is for everyone to relate. You know what I'm talking about.

D3LiNQUENTZ Review

2011-09-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

I went to see a one-woman play written and performed by Stefany Northcutt and directed by George C. Stiehl, and it was great! Plays in L.A. can sometimes suck, but this one was fast-paced, funny, poignant, and the one woman wowed. Not only did she deliver a heartfelt story, she also entertained with her super split second switches between characters and her complete physical embodiment of each.

The story centers around four juvenile delinquents sent to a Group Home to straighten up and how each of them addresses the challenges and decisions they have to make there that will affect the rest of their lives. The material could easily have been painted in overwrought strokes in less capable hands because of the personal and teenage nature of the story. Thankfully, Northcutt deftly manages to intertwine levity and pathos.

Check it out at the Write Act Repertory if you're local. It's running through October 1. Details for D3linquentz.

Beach Bonfire of the Ex-boyfriends

2011-09-17T12:08:00.000-07:00

What’s up, Universe? The past couple of weeks, five ex-boyfriends have let it be known that they have new girlfriends. Normally, that’s just news for congratulations, but I was a little inclined to say uncle. I mean, is that really necessary? I figured I was being hit over the head with either: 1. I have too many ex-boyfriends, 2. I should get off my tush and start dating, or 3. I should concentrate on finishing my book. I can’t really do anything about having too many ex-boyfriends. One can never have too many ex-boyfriends? What is the ex-boyfriend limit? #2 just seemed reactionary. The answer was to do #3 because really until I finish that, I don’t have time to troll dating sites and do the witty-email-exchange dance until we get to our appointed drinks date.

Sigh. Even Saboteur, who I speak to on a weekly basis, has a new ungirlfriend. I asked him, "Hey, can I crash at your place some time Labor Day weekend, I have to see my folks and some of my high school friends." "Oh man, homegirl is coming up," he said. "Whut, really? Everybody has a girlfriend!" I moaned. (Maybe that was #4, to express the discomfort.) I texted him later to see how his long weekend with her and her gang went. He wrote back, “Better than I expected, but the saboteur is on the loose.” Meaning, he’s already looking for excuses for why it wouldn’t work. Poor Saboteur.

So, I saw two sets of my high school friends. The gang in Huntington Beach had the eleven children running around again, which I love because I get to see my friends being parents. This includes keeping the peace and making sure the kids eat and preventing small ones from wandering over to the pool, and also, most admirably, keeping their space, not letting their conversations get interrupted by mayhem. I stayed late into the night, talking to my sweet, smart Mormon friends (30% of my high school friends are Mormon) about everything from parenting to religion to pole dancing to teaching junior high. We also reminisced about when we ourselves were in junior high and then when we were 19 and back from our first year of college, when J-Bozz was sad because suddenly all the things we used to do weren’t fun enough anymore and everyone wanted to drink. “And didn’t someone OD on something at some party, too?” J-Bozz said. “Uh ya, that would’ve been me,” I said. “ODing” on too much weed. You know, one of those newb moves when you panic because the room spins and pins you down to the floor and your limbs are twitching uncontrollably, and nobody else is experienced enough (my gang were late bloomers) to let you know that it’ll pass, and whatever you do, don’t call the paramedics.

It’s nice and funny to talk to people who know your 13-year-old self and completely apropos, as I was just working on a chapter about that period. Every time I’ve looked at my primary source material for junior high -- my diary, I’ve felt like there’s absolutely nothing of use in there. But this time, after talking to my friends, I saw it fresh. The stilted language and the boring details were hiding something big and galumphing. They were hiding the Herculean efforts we were daily engaged in to try and control our uncontrollable foolishness. Our hormones and our burning desires and our ceaselessly uncooperative bodies and impulses and things being blurted out of our mouths. Bam! I was off. Hopefully, it’ll make a good Chapter 10 or 11.

And yeah, I’ve been quiet cuz that’s what I’ve been working on. I’m taking a three-week book writing class with my former retreat instructor because I’ve come to terms with the fact that I can’t finish this thing unless I’m held accountable. So far, we’ve had two short writing marathons. Today is the big one. The six-hour monster. I’m gonna love every minute!

Labbits & Lomo Saltado

2011-09-01T13:49:00.000-07:00

Firehorse at Hotel Cafe; she's got pipes somewhere between Bjork and Gaga, check em out

Wooo, I did one of those things that you never do because you live too close to it. I went inside the Japanese American Museum.

Pink glow bear hanging from telephone wires in the night sky

I was worried that it was going to be all internment, all the time, but that was only the second floor. I say that because I thought I already knew all I needed to know, but I actually learned something up there. Japanese-Peruvians got jacked. They got shipped out of Peru and sent to the U.S. internment/concentration camps during the war because the U.S. wanted to use them for hostage exchange since they were technically illegal aliens. When the war was over, Peru said, na-uh, you can’t come back anyway. So then a couple thousand of them got deported back to Japan, where some of the second-generation had never been. Double deportation! How effed is that? The remaining three hundred fought deportation through the courts and eventually settled in New Jersey because the town of Seabrook needed farm labor. A hundred eventually made it home to Peru.

There was a baseball in the exhibit, owned by a Japanese-American kid who went to Berkeley. It was signed by his teammates before he left for Manzanar or one of the other camps, and one of them said something like,” goodbye, hope you come back soon.” Ouch. I always imagine the interned Japanese Americans as strawberry farmers and fishermen and hardware store owners and seamstresses and baseball players. Ooo, Axis Powers!

Downstairs was rabbits. Bunch of those art toy labbits recreated by various artists. Notice the perishable corn dog one, which was on sale for hundreds of dollars.

And a whole room dedicated to the comic Usagi Yojimbo, which was fun. And then had afternoon tea at the adjoining Chado Tea Room where a party of ten cosplayers arrived. Their leader was a skinny girl in a pink gothic lolita dress with black polka dots. She had a wig that was half pink and half black, and she was very aggressive about their 2PM reservations, like Little Miss Cruella De Ville.

Tim Burton and Cosplay

2011-08-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

Notice 4th generation Hawaiian amongst 1st generation OG cosplayers

I started to obsess about my Halloween costume. Yes, it’s August. It’s never too early, if you want to avoid the last minute dash to Forplay on Hollywood Blvd to pick up your Sexy Navy SEAL costume. My choice this year is gonna be sooo cosplay, I can no longer be bemused at the Japanophiles roaming around my neighborhood.

Anyway, too many hours staring at etsy and ebay, studying kilt pins and cloak pins and celtic torcs led to a fruitless drive to the fabric district right when the stores were all closing, so I turned back around and ran into some festivities near the Japanese American museum. It was the Tanabata festival. Woo, I never been!

Arthur Nakane singing "Sukiyaki"

It’s a summer festival where you write wishes and prayers on pieces of paper and tie them to bamboo because it's the one time of the year that these two stars who are lovers get to meet each other across the river of the Milky Way. (Her dad, the King of the Universe, won't let them be together the rest of the time because they don't do their work.) It was kinda lackluster though. Aw, Little Tokyo, there just aren't enough of us are there? I had some octopus balls. “No, they are not actual testicles,” the man next to me told his friends. Sort of half paid attention to a magic show and a one-man band, scanned the stalls, listened to a monk loudly inspiring a small group of ancient Buddhists in earnest Japanese, ate some chirashi zushi AKA a bowl of rice with sashimi and sauce on top. Gave instructions to German tourists on how to eat said chirashi zushi. Done with festival.

Streamers symbolize umm, the weaving that is the female star's occupation

But seriously, if you haven’t donated to Japan cuz they are liable to be ok by themselves, please do, they still need help, that thing is still leaking and entire pre-schools are getting bloody noses.

Sunday was LACMA. Tim Burton and $20 heirloom tomato and salami salad (bunch of us split it, but still) at the museum café. The new section of the museum is really pleasant though, it’s like pleasant eveningville. You can hear some jazz or chamber music, you can look at Hakuin calligraphy, and then munch flatbreads and swill white wine at Stark Bar which looks like a truck stop a la Design Within Reach. If you haven’t understood this entire paragraph, you are totally cool, call me.

Tim Burton, though. “Eehh,” people are apparently saying about the exhibit. I liked it. V-Dawg pointed out that he seemed to be funnier when he was younger. You can see it when he’s drawing a rather fleshy nude in some art class and then draws a very similarly fleshy monster in the corner of his paper. I liked his titles, like “Curse of the Crying Woman” and “Woman from a Prehistoric Planet.”

I loved the Edward Scissorhands costume up close, with all the belt buckles and seams and different leathers and mismatched metals. Hmm, silver buckles at the chest (one giant moon-shaped one, so awesome) but brass colored ones on the left boot. Maybe it’s only me that has mixed feelings about mixing metals, but it was inspiring to see the kind of messy creativity that he and his team have. Oh right, it's the camera and the lighting that adds the final layer of perfection.

In fact, I should stop zooming in on photographs of the character I want to dress up as for Halloween and throw some shit together that FEELS like her. Haha, yeah, right.

From Russia With Love

2011-08-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

Happy first week of Ramadan!

Look at Miss Black Widow with her funnel of babies!!

Last weekend I went to a drinks mixer put on by another writing retreat I had considered attending before I ended up in Italy. Figured it would be a good way to meet some writers and maybe even the instructor, and I was feeling all social and up for it. It was at a restaurant called Street on Highland Ave, and we had some nice little meatballs and dumplings and chips. They have a bacon-infused vodka which I didn’t try because vodka doesn’t go into a mojito. Waitaminute. I totally should’ve told them to make a bacon mojito! Anway, I sat at the first open table and introduced myself to a pair of wonderful women, one an expert in finance and agape, the other a chef and food writer. After some drinks and stories of my own, I had them roaring about their own dating stories, and we were having a blast. I explained that I am trying to be more firm about what I want from a relationship instead of going with the flow and seeing how things go and ignoring red flags, and the Chef pointed out that men tend to disclose their main issues and baggage right on the first or second date, and it’s our job to listen and consider if we can live with those things instead of glossing over them.

Baby black widows

I must agree, that at least the good men I’ve dated tend to disclose very early on. If they like us, they seem to want to throw all their shit on the table to make sure we’re willing to put up with them. I find it counter to how I behave on a first date, when I’m being uber-attentive and charming. It would seem a woman’s instinct would be to ease a man into any baggage. But yes, men tend to say exactly what they mean. There’s no need to listen to the edges of their conversation because they’re not over there.

Writers mixing.

One of these lovely women then provided the example of a man who wanted to make sure she was ok with his predilection for…poo. He notified her that he wanted to watch her defecate and wipe her ass because he was a “butt nurse.” Gross! This supports my other generalization that men like poo more than women do.

Exhibit A: Howdy Ho! (Photo courtesy: Comedy Central)

The lone man sitting at our table was a famous Russian dog trainer and a friend of the Loving Financier. He asked me if I was Chinese or Japanese and when I tried to explain, he dismissed me as American. He said, “We Russians looove Chinese peepel, but we do not respect them.” I asked why they loved the Chinese, and he said, “Because, we both come from Socialist beckground, and we both have looong history in our culture, and we are verrry loyal, we do not change friends easily. When no one else was our friend, China was our only friend, when we needed most.” After the girls and I got carried away for a while, he decided to leave, and he whispered to me, “You are vonderful. Do you have the Facebook?” He told me he was famous as he gave me his business card. I asked him how he was famous, and he said, “You will see.” Upon his exit, the girls said, “He’s totally married, he’s totally married!” I thanked them for that. As if I would go out with a famous Russian dog trainer.

Which reminds me of the Hollywood High flea market I checked out the day before, where a man from Belarus was manning his marvelous vintage bag booth. Chewy leather overnights from the 70’s, a waterproof canvas number from the 50’s, old Louis Vuitton, and so much more. He had two very disinterested daughters helping him, and he was very angry with me after I wandered around his booth holding a dramatic bag for twenty minutes and then I put it back. “I had three customers asking me about bag, but I thought you were going to buy. Now you put it back! Show me the money!” he berated me. I yelled back that I didn’t see three customers, he should’ve told me, and I would’ve given it up. Then I wandered around the rest of the market and headed back to buy the bag after all, saying, “I’m buying this bag even though you were mean to me,” and he said, “Now you buy bag, I give you hug.” And he did with a smile. Then we were chatting for a while, and I asked him where he sourced his bags from, and he said, “I am best vintage bag source! Every week I am at Fairfax and also at Rose Bowl once a month. You come, you call.” He gave me his card, too.

The preserved bat in the middle glows in the dark!

The other story I have is my biannual rant about movie or television production crews. This time, they were shooting something on my street, which is common and fine, whatever, but they totally woke me up twice, once at 6:30 AM and then again at 7:30 with loud music. I don’t usually get woken up by loud noises so it must’ve been very loud, but of course I was able to go right back to sleep. Later I was leaving for work, and I had two empty boxes to throw in the trash, one of cereal and the other of Kotex. As I am heading towards the dumpster inside our building, I wearily eyed the four or five production assistants sitting around our lobby. Sure enough, as I throw the cereal box, the young girl manning the front door asked me, “Umm, are you leaving this way?” And I said, no I’m going out the car port. And then she simpered, “Ok, well can you leave your trash, and I will throw it away for you because they’re filming out there, and we have to be quiet.” GRRRRR. I did not say, No, YOU have to be quiet because you woke me up twice this morning, and this is an empty box that I’m throwing in the trash which is not going to be heard outside on the street, have some fucking perspective, you do not have the most important job in the world. Like most people, I can’t think of everything right when I need to say them, especially when I'm mad. Maybe if I was a fiery Russian woman. Instead, I left her my empty box of pantiliners.

Avatar walking.

General Sherman

2011-07-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were several blocks from my house this past weekend for the BAFTA event at a theater downtown, and I considered actually loitering by the barricades to see if I could catch a glance. This is something I would never do, not even for Brad and Angelina. But for godsake, they were going to be just down the street! Like I would ever be able to see them anywhere else, right? And then I found out that one of my best friends is involved with Inner City Arts, where they teach art to underprivileged kids on Skid Row, which is where Wills and Kate were going to be the next day, and so I was like, umm, hello, can we go there? Can you get us in? It's Royalty! He said, No, but do you want to go on a road trip instead?

So I went to the mountains. I looked at General Sherman, which is the fattest tree in the world. (A giant sequoia tree.) We ate at three of the five restaurants in the one-street town. The realtor who helped us find the house we rented brought us banana bread that she baked. The neighbor told us not to park the car outside because marmots will crawl up into the engine and chew on the tubes. We walked down to the Kaweah River and sat in the cold water. Not in the class IV rapids, but right next to it, in the mellow part by the banks. In the middle of the night, I woke up to get a cough drop, and the river looked all white out the window, much much faster than during the afternoon because the snow that had melted up in the mountains had finally reached us. I stood there in the blue light of the gradually breaking day, marveling at the roaring water...

Hahaha, who the hell am I?

Purgatorio

2011-07-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

The following is a poem I wrote at the retreat. I haven't written a presentable poem in 5, 7 years. This is mildly presentable, and you will totally understand it! It's about feeling old and sick and weak and strong and alive and confident at the same time.

Look at his crazy cuteness!!

Umbrian Summer

When I was younger, I used to ask,
At what age do you stop looking better
Than the year before?
Small folds like origami mistakes
Line the space between the eyes and
Between my nose and my cheeks,
The result of hard sleeping against a heavy pillow
The mark of quiet battles in the night
Against a weakening body
Against a frivolous love
Against the quickening of time
And the accompanying hurry of running in place.
My spirit still wonders, at what age?
But my face knows better,
My desiccated spine asks me to slow down,
Instead of hopping continental divides and conquering
Parties and relishing every spice and thread count,
Collecting tall tails for a waiting public.
My back compels me to contemplate,
Tries to entice me with an invalid’s life --
The consumptive author,
Bed-ridden poet.

I have been dreaming of adventures
All my life
From school desks
To office desks
Paid for poor facsimiles in 10 day vacations
Knowing all the while that this was not the same as
The sure foot in a really big life,
A James Bond kind of life.
But in reality, I have never been that hardy,
I am afraid of the ocean and a stick shift car
I am afraid of South American mosquitoes and Alaskan bears
I am afraid of the kick back on a small caliber Beretta
I can drink a centimeter of your finest martini,
But I have never been afraid of truth or loss
And at the end, even James Bond
Will have only these.

Perhaps it’s just the fever
A midlife fever, a swollen throat shutting
Itself around a red voice
Trying to batten down the reasons I’ve come to this rolling green
Hillside nowhere
In search of nothing, knowing already
Full well
In hand
That the red voice is mine and here
And not a moving, blinking target of firefly or bumblebee
Or wafting ember in the smoky question of a French woman
Clarifying her Italian.
As if everything I needed was not already at my fingers,
As if I wasn’t somebody now, already,
As if I did not believe my own story that
Baby boomers would propel the medical devices industry
Into developing bionic spinal discs
With refillable gel packs.
I am more like this crumbly farmhouse
Than paranoid bunnies thumping the ground
Or light blue moths that will die tomorrow.
Tomorrow never dies, as long as I have this red braying voice,
Raspy as the stone.

6/23/11
Casa della Pace, Sant Andrea, Pietralunga, Perugia, Italy

Paradiso

2011-07-08T12:03:00.000-07:00

The bunny in the distance was the cutest one there and will be making a few appearances.

So, yes, I like to eat hot dogs and carbs. I like smoking cigarettes and running around my L.A.-paced life complaining about how I can’t find time to write. I worry about where the next boyfriend is going to come from and whether this degenerated disc thing is going to make an invalid out of me, before I’ve had my fill of running around. And then BAM, I’m in some hills up in Umbria, sitting in the grass with some wild bunnies and letting the bees bounce off my forehead on their way to the lavender bushes.

Ginestra is bigger than she looks here. Especially when she kicks.

The first day a donkey named Ginestra brayed and ran up the hill to join our discussion circle which was discussing poetry and Zen woodcuts. There were wasps, scorpions, fireflies (they freaked me out the first night, I thought they were something digital), moths, glow worms, tiny little magenta termites, flies, cicadas, butterflies, and centipedes. And I’ve never been so at peace with such creatures. You can bat at them, but they don’t really care about you. You’re in their world. At night, it’s so clear, not only can you see all the stars, you can see the satellites slowly rolling through space.

A light blue moth against the bathroom mirror!

Glow worm is hanging onto rock wall.

7:30AM yoga, 9:00AM silent breakfast of homemade muesli, yogurt, nutty bread, super local (from the farm down the road) honey and jams, fruits, and strong coffee. After that, we’d meet in the garden to read and discuss the morning lesson, and then separate to write until lunch. You could write in a hammock, at a table outside, on a wicker chair (this I could stand for a little bit), or what turned out to work best for my back, lying on a pile of mats and cushions in the converted-chapel-yoga room. Then we’d meet after the super healthy and savory vegetarian lunch for another discussion before writing or walking or napping until dinner. After dinner, sometimes there was a fire or a night walk. I had brought my hiking boots, but there was no way the disc was going to hang with a hilly jaunt, and I had to miss out on some girl talk.

A typical and delicious vegetarian meal.

I quit smoking because there were simply no cigarettes. The next real town is an hour drive. Although, I did corner one of the hippies who worked at the house and asked him to roll me one about mid-week. Other than that, I went stone cold, and I didn’t even care. I was too busy trying to figure out how to build this life back home, where I spent part of the day lying down on a hard wood floor and writing. I asked my yoga teacher to give me a massage, and she went to town. That was the first time my back unclenched.

We had a writing marathon on Thursday, where we wrote for 7 hours at the minimum speed of one letter per second. I got 11 rough chapters done. Part way through, the laptop ran out of juice, and I switched to handwriting, which slowed me down considerably and actually made my writing more finished as it was coming out because my brain had more time to think. I think the last time I was scribbling in a notebook was 20 years ago. My roommate was 19, and she can’t say that about anything.

And then we were off to Florence for the weekend, another place I’d been 20 years ago, where we ate steak and veal and pasta and drank amazing house Sangiovese wine (like Chianti) everywhere we went. Gelato prosciutto tiramisu! Leather and scarves and Michelangelo! Up at the Piazza Michelangelo where you have city views, we ran into the Chianti Chapter of a Harley Davidson riding club. Chianti Chapter sounds super not tough. I forgot that Florence is such a shopping town. Furla has much cuter, more colorful purses in Italy, and there are big linen or cotton pants that are poufy at the ankles. Pants that are poufy at the ankles! You have no idea what I’m talking about until you see me in my new pantaloons. I have not see pantaloons in Los Angeles since Melrose in the 90’s.

The interior of the Duomo above.

The famous Ponte Vecchio over the Arno River.

The site of veal chop consumption.

French Free Willie store.

I caught a terrible flu-like cold in Florence bumming cigarettes off of strange tourists. When we returned to our hideaway retreat, I slept fitfully on the hard twin bed and imploded into a feverishly invalid poet. Yes, just as I had predicted! Thankfully, we were not at a loss for tea and honey and fruits and horse pills of wellness.

So, I might’ve finished a rough draft of my book had I not taken ill, but the funny thing was, my back was stretching itself out, surviving the Florentine cobbles and loosening even further in Assisi, where we went on a day trip the last Friday. Assisi is gorgeous and quaint and provides the landscape you imagine when you think of Tuscany or Umbria, that gold and green grid of fields accented here and there by perfectly placed cypress trees. It’s the sort of view Japanese water colorists come to paint, and then they just end up renting a room and selling their paintings and raising half Italian children. It is Roman and devout and dreamy. Talk about the most romantic religious frescos ever at St. Francis’s Basilica. I came home with a heart pendant in an Italian metal composed of copper and zinc (giving it that rose gold color), gorgeous kitchen linens, a ceramic plate done in a traditional peacock pattern that is more detailed than the usual rustic Italian style, and a very close representation of the Platonic ideal of sandals handmade in a chewy brown leather.

This guy was hardcore. Sack cloth, rope, bare feet.

Sneaking photos of the ceilings at St. Francis' Basilica.

A 70's fresco!

Shop shop shop, I know. What I haven’t made clear, is that the retreat rocked my mental landscape more than anything. It confirmed my suspicions that I am onto something, that I know how to write, and that it’s not so hard to do it if you remember how much fun and vital it is. I realized that I should quit worrying about whether what I’m writing is interesting or not because I was interested in what all the other writers had to say, whether they were a sweet mom or a lyrical diplomat’s daughter an ex-meangirl or a Native American force of nature. Such beautiful voices, everyone, including my raspy one.

Columns at the Temple of Minerva.

I can still taste this simple and delectable pappardelle with lamb ragu from La Fortezza.

Inferno

2011-07-05T12:34:00.000-07:00

It was hot in the concrete box and I’d been cooped up with illness for a week, so I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood this 4th. You can see and hear fireworks in all directions of Los Angeles from here, and I found myself walking around Little Tokyo with my mouth open like a tourist. I got a cold drink, talked to some nice fellas who work for the city in front of Far Bar, and got back here in time to put the laundry in the dryer.

Some friends who were launching small fireworks from the rooftop across the way.

I have been to hell and heaven in my own mini Divine Comedy the past couple months. I felt so loved I cried at my surprise potluck potato birthday party which included my best friend who flew in from Seattle and baked fingerling potatoes, mashed potatoes, potato tacos, garlic stir fried potatoes, Arabic bread with potato filling, stewed potatoes, cheesy scalloped potatoes, and sweet potato pie! I got Thai massaged and Korean scrubbed. And then I threw out my back again from sleeping on a couch while house sitting and then walking at the mall.

Some birthday flowers

Walking at the mall! Am I really so effin’ fragile? Obviously going to the chiropractor for a year and religious yoga has done nothing. Lower back pain is something that affects millions of people, but this was the second time in two years that I could barely walk. A week and a half before I was leaving for an Italian yoga and writing retreat, I was debilitated and in constant pain.

Thus commenced a whirlwind week of back specialist appointments, X-rays, nerve tests, a numbing injection, and a late night MRI. I have to commend the Spine Center at Cedars Sinai for seeing me so quickly and making everything available to me at the last minute. Doc loaded me up with Vicodin, Ibuprofen, and muscle relaxants for the trip, and told me to come back when I returned for an epidural steroid injection if I needed it from all the travelling. An injection into the spine! I thought I would never have to get one of those.
I did cry at the office when he was poking around the hot spot with the nerve test needle after I saw my desiccated spinal disc, all black and free of fluid and bulging out. Herniated, he said. It happens to people my age, and the white marks on my spine near the disc indicate that I’ve had it for a while. Sitting for too long is bad for it. (Hi, I have an office job. And I write. How does one eliminate sitting from this life?) People live with it. Pain management, maybe some traction. After running around doing all these tests, the diagnosis is that there isn’t really anything I can do and I will always be in pain? How am I supposed to live with not being able to walk around? I wanted to throw plates out the window...

I carefully timed my pills out for my 16 hour trip to Rome. An Ibuprofen for the first leg to Montreal. By the way, Air Canada only provides snack food available for purchase on their 5 hour flight from L.A. I remember when flying was awesome. The airport at Montreal entertained me for my three hour layover, and I even did something I’ve never ever done before. I snuck a cigarette in the bathroom. All airport employees told me that there was no way to go out and have a cigarette once we were passed security, which I had bypassed, so I wasn’t going to risk having to go through it. Except one employee, who told me people sneak cigarettes in the changing room all the time. Where moms change babies? It seemed totally wrong, but when I found the bathrooms, it was obviously because the handicapped and the changing one were their own rooms, not connected to the general stalls. I didn’t see how I was going to last to Rome without my last puff. There was a little drain in the floor that the smoke seemed to disappear down when I exhaled into it, and I ran the hand dryer. God, it was good.

Second leg was Vicodin and muscle relaxant I think. And the cushion I usually sit on was supporting my back. Thankfully we got a hot meal and a snack and a blankie and pillow. Course, somehow, I made it, and then it was four hours of waiting at the airport for our shuttle bus driver to collect us. I met all the other women on the retreat one-by-one, and then we drove out for what was supposed to be a three-hour ride. Which was actually four or five since our driver got lost in the Umbrian hills, looking for this mystical stone farmhouse retreat. I was too out of it to not be sleeping through most of the tension. He apparently offered anyone who was feeling uncertain to drive back to Rome with him instead of this middle of nowhere. But when we got there, Stephen and Jade, a beautiful couple who were our wonderful hosts and instructors were waiting for us on a bench, beaming.

Middle of Italian nowhere

To be continued in the next installment, this week!

Irrelevant News

2011-05-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

So much news…Libya, the Royal Wedding, tornadoes, Bin Laden. I was walking back from having clam chowder with Saboteur on the San Clemente pier in south Orange County when he got a text saying they got Bin Laden. In disbelief, we paused under an apartment with its windows open to try and hear the news from a loud television. Ten years ago, he and I were what most people would call dating, and we had gone to a coffee shop to watch the 9/11 coverage. Afterwards, we outfitted his red Mazda with my American flag, more as a preventative measure than a strictly patriotic one, seeing as how Saboteur takes after his Arab father rather than his German mother, and the tenor of the general public was yet uncertain, even though I reasoned he would be perfectly safe in Los Angeles. Now, with the news of Bin Laden, Saboteur was texting all his Republican friends with some satisfaction, saying, you see, you put a liberal in there, and we got him! There is a note of anger from Saboteur regarding our number one most wanted, stemming from how the Al Qaeda mastermind affected his life and the lives of his Arab American family members.

Over here, I feel ambivalent, of course, proving that I am a goddamn liberal. I don’t really jump up and down for brutal killings, but neither do I necessarily disapprove of those guys yelling U!S!A! in front of the White House. Let them. I was impressed with the way we sent in a crack team instead of leveling the place. I don’t know anyone who lost anyone in the Twin Towers. I only know a great guy who avoids airports like the plague and has always had to defend his religion, his ethnicity, even though he was born in Ohio. I think he will have to continue to do so, but he’s eloquent, approachable, and smart enough to be a good example of how to do it with grace.

Before all that, I woke up at 2:45AM to watch the Royal Wedding. Couldn’t stay up longer than an hour though and caught the balcony kisses on the highlights. People have been surprised that I’ve been into it, but I think it’s hard not to be if you were a girl when Di and Charles got married. I was in Tokyo, and my neighbor, Yuki-chan, and I made a collage that summer with all the wedding clippings we could find and wrote romantic sentiments with hearts over our i’s. I like Kate and Wills. They seem so sweet together, made me all wistful. Especially after reading all the asides that the lip readers figured out, from him telling her she was beautiful and that he loved her when she first arrived at the altar to when she spaced out in the carriage and he reminded her to wave back to the people even if it’s too much for her. It was like we were able to witness the blur between their private life and their public face, which made them seem fairly normal, which made the wedding seem even more absurd. I was totally trolling The Mail and The Guardian online, who were squeezing out more coverage than the American media in the days following. Loved the dress, the hats, and Prince Harry strutting around with his big epaulettes...

In other news, I have been cat sitting my favorite holy terror and continuing a self-imposed hibernation, but I am starting to get a little antsy. The inactivity is starting to weigh my momentum down, especially this poor blog. I think I’ll be ready to hit the town this summer after I return from my Italian writing and yoga retreat! That’s two weeks of writing help, daily yoga, and vegetarian meals, which means the cigs are out the door, too. I am soo looking forward to this treat such that I have already purchased bug spray, summer dresses, and a guide book, and borrowed a suitcase, a laptop, and power converters. Preparation is actually the key to spontaneity for recovered worry warts. When you’re ready for anything, there’s nothing to fear.

Oh, I was THIS close to nailing down my new pen name, when another friend of mine from Tokyo found me on Facebook and told me that the Japanese names I’ve picked remind him of a “50 year old saloon owner.” New Japanese names have blown apart the old naming conventions with regards to what characters and sounds parents are using today. Doesn’t really seem like anyone names their kids after their parents over there either. The Japanese names that show up on baby name sites here are pretty old, and all the new third generation Japanese-American kids must be walking around with laughably unfashionable middle names. I may end up picking a laughably unfashionable pen name anyway. There is something appealing to me about a 50 year old Japanese saloon owner. Otherwise, I’m going to be walking around with a brand spanking new trendy Japanese girl’s name, like I’m some kind of three year old.

A Bit of Culture at the Getty

2011-04-06T17:05:00.000-07:00

I went across town to visit the Getty Museum.

I was reminded of something my friend Halcyon said in the garden, where she was visiting and wishing she had a garden like it, when she realized, waitaminute, I do have a garden like this, I'm here right now.

It's a beautiful place, uplifting and liable to keep you locked into the present like that. Especially, later at twilight, when the travertine stone was lit blue like the air and the city...

And a funny place, too, or I just really enjoy my own company.

But I was really there to see this guy:

He's an Italian photographer, one of the first to take pictures throughout Asia starting in the 1850's and during the Crimean War, the Indian Rebellion, and the Second Opium War. He took pictures of Chinese dudes with queues and samurai. My peoples! I wasn't allowed to take photos of his sepia-colored prints, some of them hand-painted to add color, but I was totally transfixed by them and weirdly transported into history. Like, here I am, staring at Felice's work, even of places I've been, and he was over there, before me, staring at my ancestors through his camera.

I had to stop by the dark room with the medieval illuminated manuscripts. This one is hilarious, and they don't sell a postcard of it! She got eaten by a dragon, but her saintly pleas encouraged God to save her by splitting the dragon's stomach open. Look at the dragon's face! He's all, "Bleagh." Then there was another exhibit I couldn't take pics of, the bronze statues from Angkor of Buddha and Ganesh and a sacred, badass bull. I looved how Buddha looked more Cambodian than Chinese or Indian. I love all the different faces of Jesus in the paintings at the Getty, too, Flemish Jesus, German Jesus, Italian Jesus.

I also love this painting. Look at those loungy, fleshy pre-Raphaelite chicks with the decadent tiger skin, the brown grout (did they use grout?) between the marble tiles.

Here's the goddess triumvirate, Juno, Venus, Minerva:

The Getty has a lot of STUFF, too. Furniture...or decorative arts. These guys are wishing they hadn't put the china on top.

Mmm...fancy beds:

And my favorite of the day was this painting of Chance and Destiny:

Because, look at these shoes they're wearing! Especially Destiny's super modern sneaker sandals.

Lady Gaga at Staples Center

2011-03-31T16:44:00.000-07:00

Epic.

Even from the nosebleeds. Natural eyesight was actually more zoomed in than the camera phone pic above, so you could see her person dancing and posing and throwing her yellow hair around.

From the moment she first became visible, standing in the shadows on top of a landing with her over-sized shoulders, to when she opened her mouth and the screen in front of the stage rose up, I felt a matching rise, the rising euphoria of a true fan. It's been a long damn time.

It was brilliant to watch her make the grotesque look sexy. Not only is it hilariously entertaining, it also supports her outreach to misfits and the disenfranchised, her simple message that everyone is a beautiful superstar, no matter that you've been ridiculed or ostracized or under-appreciated. On the one hand, it's an underdog message that everyone likes to relate to, and something every young person needs to be reminded of when they're feeling insecure and anxious. On the other hand, everyone under 25 still thinks they're going to make it big and become famous, so it fires up their hopes and dreams. And on the third hand, it fits in with what my friend Stellar likes to call "the pyramid scheme" of new age spiritualism...

You know how the message goes. It's like, hey, I've become more confident/found true love/reached enlightenment through much struggle and disappointment, so I wrote this book/these songs to help you realize that you are also wonderful, and you can put yourself first too and become successful, just like I am because you are buying this book/song/taking my seminar. I love writing this book/song/seminar for you, so we're all on this journey together, becoming prosperous and magnetizing love, because you love me, and I love you. Somehow, people don't mind being in that pyramid scheme, because it doesn't seem so bad to make a living by helping other people, and it doesn't seem like a waste of money spending it on making yourself a better person. Gaga and her fans' mutual adoration also reminds me of the Backstreet Boys' single "Large Than Life:"

I may run and hide
When you're screamin' my name, alright
But let me tell you now
There are prices to fame, alright
All of our time spent in flashes of light

All you people can't you see, can't you see
How your love's affecting our reality
Every time we're down
You can make it right
And that makes you larger than life

Looking at the crowd
And I see your body sway, c'mon
Wishin' I could thank you in a different way, c'mon
'Cause all of your time spent keeps us alive

Yeah, I just put some Backstreet Boys lyrics on my blog, I did. But, that was the first time I noticed a pop group acknowledge that they owe their existence to their fans so directly in a song. Gaga wouldn't do something so obvious, but she does like to tell them if she had to give up everything and just keep her fans, she would. "Come on you guys, we only have two hours to be together!"

She is also playing with something more complicated than new age pyramid schemes, of course. Fame today, actually not fame, that is too easy, super stardom today involves a complex equation of dogged persistence, genius talent, cinematic vision, smart marketing, narcissism and its apology, humanitarian effort. To say that she's got all that down is an understatement. "I'm like Tinkerbell who dies if you don't clap for her," she said as she collapsed on the floor after a particularly aggressive, high-heeled dance routine, while committing to match donations to LGBT homeless youth shelters at the top of the show and reminding us to buy the tsunami relief bracelets she designed.

She is also just fun. She delivers these ridiculously goofy dance moves like shaking her open hands in front of her face in an epileptic pace or the sandwich-making gestures from "Telephone," with so much deadly seriousness, it takes it from goofy and elevates it to the much cooler absurd. And her performance is of course a gigantic pastiche of Madonna (pointy bras, Alejandro = La Isla Bonita, Born This Way = Express Yourself, Gaga is going through Madonna's entire periods in singles), Michael Jackson (she has one number with a lot of crotch rubbing and has one hand encased in a huge, bloody, skeletal monster hand; how genius is it to make a simple hand gesture - the claw - be a symbol of your solidarity with your fans), Hitchcock, the Wizard of Oz (because she was robbed of the role of Dorothy in high school by her nemesis, her friends just bought her a pair of Judy Garland's real ruby slippers, which she promptly used to bang on the piano, and the narrative of the concert is that they're on a fantastical journey to find the Monster Ball), Aliens, David Bowie, and a whole lot of other things I'm not hip enough to catch.

It was also Gaga's 25th birthday. "My dad told me 'because it's your birthday, people are going to be throwing a lot of things on stage, so don't put anything in your mouth,'" she said. Being successful, actually materializing the dream when you're that young, is something that very few people experience. Usually you start getting accused of being out of touch or you just combust if you don't have the constitution. F. Scott Fitzgerald alluded to this problem when he was being criticized for writing about glamorous people and partying all the time. He was like, well, that's what I know. Omg, Gwyneth! Anyway, all of sold out Staples Center sang her happy birthday, and we sounded remarkably good. She was sufficiently moved.

Midori Anisette

2011-03-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

Skittles (not his real name), a neighborhood prowler

My dad and I were waiting in the trailer for the really frazzled car dealer service guy to finish up our paperwork. My car was getting a new timing belt and the dealership was getting remodeled, so we were all sweating it out in a wood paneled trailer. I thought it was a good time to ask my dad if I were to write a book that I didn’t want him to read, would he prefer that I not use my real name. My dad said, “Of course.” He’s into protecting the family’s privacy. He didn’t even want me to use my real middle name. Really?! Then I was going to have to come up with a whole new name instead of just dropping the last part. When we got home, I asked my mom the same thing. She just laughed and said, “I’m not going to read it anyway, use whatever name you want, just make some money.” Right, right.

I’ve never sat around coming up with potential baby names for obvious reasons but also because naming is a daunting business. It’s creation business. I used to work for a naming company as a freelance name generator. I came up with hundreds of names for new drugs, new companies, new make-up, whatever. I got Latin dictionaries, French dictionaries, books on myths, thesauri. But, where do you even start when you’re naming yourself?

First of all, I already have this name I write under, why can’t I just use this one? I need something a little more real-sounding depending on the publication and type of writing. Also, there is a great deal of uncertainty when people who have only known me professionally as Malice meet me for the first time. “Hi, and you must be…Maleese?” They don’t seem to want to pronounce it the way the word is spelled once it’s attached to a person, which seems sweet, but I don’t know. I don’t want to invite hesitation at an introduction...

Secondly, how ethnic do I keep my name? I thought I could easily use my unofficial Japanese middle name, but that’s got its own problems: Yoko. It’s inescapably been done. The way my mom writes the characters is perfect for me too; it means “half Japanese, half Chinese.” I’ve seen some other sites say it means “foreign child.” Haha. Anyway, if I’m ditching Yoko, then picking a new Japanese name has been impossibly difficult. Sometimes I don’t get the connotations, the sounds, the imagery. Other times, the pronunciation with an American accent ruins the melody. I’m also a little suspicious of the meanings for the Japanese names they put on baby name sites…it’s like getting a tattoo in Chinese characters that you think says “Strong Heart” but maybe it really says “Roof Beam.” Can’t you just look at the picture of me and tell what color I am? Do I have to be that literal with the name? Is it going to seem like I’m hiding if I don’t?

Still fumbling for some parameters, I had a brilliant idea…numerology! I went to see Saboteur to get my taxes done and calculated names on scratch paper while he played with Turbo Tax. “You think I’m crazy, huh?” I asked him. He looked me in the eye and solemnly answered, “Mm, yeah, a little bit. But you’re right, you have to start somewhere and numbers are good.” So diplomatic, that CPA.

Numerologically, my real name has no 1’s or 8’s in it. 8’s are for money, power, success, things I apparently don’t care enough about, which makes me less stressed out but maybe also less focused. 1’s are for independence, leadership, courage of conviction, yourself. AH HA! I could definitely use some 1’s and maybe even an 8, if not to be successful, at least to help me manage my finances, god.

After two weeks of scratch paper calculations and a myriad permutations that have taken me to the far reaches of my absurd fondness for extra fancy and liqueur-inspired names, I still haven’t decided on one. A serious name, Malice! Focus! A name you can wear and answer to…a name that feels like you.

Yes, Honey, Groups Are Weird

2011-03-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

So there's some dumb UCLA student named Alexandra Wallace who posted a racist rant on YouTube about Asian kids. Link to Salon's coverage here.

She appears to be complaining about Chinese kids (even though I think she later references the tsunami -- awesome) because she acts out how they talk on the phone by saying “Ohh, ching chong ling long...” Man, I haven’t heard one of those since 1984!

In some of the comments to above link, people are chiming in that they too have gone to school with lots of Asian students and they are “weird, cliquish, and annoying” or that they have worked in an IT department with a lot of Chinese guys and they are “assholes.” Really? Really, you’re going to do exactly what she did, but anonymously?

This all reminds me of something my ex Monster has said. Here now is the newest installment of Other People’s Aphorisms:

“You know how I hate groups of people.”

Everyone is annoying and weird when they are in a group, and you are observing them as an individual. It’s so effing simple. This configuration just highlights the differences between you and them. Groups of frat boys are annoying. Groups of Americans travelling through France are annoying. Groups of Huntington Beach teenagers are annoying. Groups of Armenian dudes driving on the go cart track are annoying. Groups of lesbians taking over the Ace Hotel are annoying. Groups of screenwriters at brunch, hella annoying.

If you’re talking to any one of those people as an individual, then you’ll probably like them. Because when two people are talking, you’re finding common ground, seeing each other’s similarities, acknowledging that you are both really just two human beings, commenting on the weather or sticking it to the man or admiring Charlie Sheen or whatever. Might be why people say some version of the “some of my closest friends are gay/teenagers/screenwriters” bit when they’re backtracking from their rant against whatever group they’ve just run into.

God, figure it out. No need to get all racist and retarded. And annoying all by yourself.

Tsunami

2011-03-11T20:23:00.000-08:00

I had a post ready to go this week, but then I got sidelined by work...and then bam, tsunami time. We couldn't get a hold of grams or gramps or my aunt in Tokyo until late in the afternoon today, so that was worrisome. I started fidgeting on Facebook, although I figured they'd be alright. Worst thing that happened was that my aunt had to walk home from work because the trains were down, and it took her 45 minutes. I'm so relieved.

I was at a little after party last night with coworkers when I got a text from Saboteur asking me if I was seeing what was happening in Japan. Last time Saboteur sent me a text like that, it was 9/11. I hurried and got the TV turned on. It was horrifying and crazy that we were seeing those monstrous, flaming, boat-laden waves sweep through the countryside as it was happening. Rest in peace, drowned brothers and sisters.

Looking At Angel Eyes, Talking to Fear

2011-03-01T21:36:00.000-08:00

Lee Van Cleef

That picture above was my Valentine’s date. Angel Eyes from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, smirking at me from the old CRT (as in not flat panel or HD). I got nothing this week. I like it when I have to write something, and I think I got nothing to say because I usually end up saying something weird. But, yeah. No parties, no events, spent the whole weekend in front of my computer writing or playing totally idiotic Facebook games which I employ to dull my online shopping compulsion. I can buy imaginary tractors and buildings and fruit trees and weapons, and I don’t end up with some high-heeled booties that get worn once a quarter. Yup, all’s quiet on the western front. Just me and my thoughts hunkering down in a cold, blustery Los Angeles.

A weird part of Santa Monica Blvd.

The Oscars were boring. And…I went to get some pho on Saturday night at the hipster-matic pho place on Sunset. I noticed being noticed for eating alone, which hasn’t happened in a while. Is that still weird? To see a lone woman intently slurping down some noodles, deep in thought? Maybe it’s weird at a hot spot like that. But food alone and movies alone…nothing beats that kind of immersion. Guys know that…don’t you, solo guys? The only problem with eating alone is that sometimes the absolutely inane conversations from the next table over simply cannot be escaped. One table had a British guy at it. He was complaining about the politics at work, of course, and he was in the industry. I think I’ve only ever met British people in L.A. who work in entertainment. Must be the only reason to be here. The other table had two girls in their twenties, black nails, black eyeliner. One of them had a love interest who treated her exceptionally well except she wasn’t sure what their status was because you know, he says all these things, but he hasn’t made any commitments to her…yawwwnnn...

Oh, here’s something! You know how I was talking to Regret the other week to find out what it was telling me? I had another conversation with an emotion, but this time, I had to write my greatest fear a letter. At first I thought this was going to be a piece of cake. I stare down my fears all the time, that’s how I live, I make a habit of it, ya di ya. But this isn’t about being afraid to talk in public or of getting lost in the woods or of being attacked by spiky robot pineapples. This is about getting to your primal fear, the fear that drives you around your life, dropping you off at tennis and picking you up from your boyfriend’s house. There was a partial list of fears to choose from. Here are just a few of them that I liked:

Death
Appearing Needy
Failure
Being Criticized
Ridicule
Emptiness
Being Unloved
Embarrassment
Ruin
Being Wrong
Responsibility
Annihilation
Appearing Stupid
Financial Insecurity

So, you have to pick just one, which is difficult. A helpful way to narrow it down is to ask yourself these questions: What have you been driven to prove is absolutely not true about you? What worst case scenarios do you anticipate? What have you been trying to get from others that you don’t believe you have from within?

You first write a letter from that Fear, telling you all the horrible things it always tries to tell you. Then you write a letter back, speaking to your Fear as if it were a child throwing a tantrum that needs to be calmed down. I got sooo confused with this exercise. I was holding my forehead, racking my brains. It was like, wait, is this the Fear or is this me talking? Should this be in the other letter? Aren’t we the same person? Is it because of Fear that I act this way, or I inherently act this way, so it proves the Fear wrong? Why is it so hard to separate myself from you?! Is it because we’ve grown so entwined or because I am having a hard time defining myself in this vacuum of my loft, these weekends I’ve been thinking and creating, not mirrored by anyone except old Angel Eyes? Aren’t I becoming more myself? Perhaps I have reached that point where I’ve actually thought too much, and I need to go outside. Fascinating.

An Evening At Mindshare LA

2011-02-24T11:03:00.000-08:00

I went to my first Mindshare LA evening last Thursday, three talks of a post Valentine’s theme. Mindshare LA is kind of like a TED talk, part presentations on interesting ideas, part mixer with sponsored drinks, games, live music, weird toys, food trucks and even delicious baked goods from Portos. Meangirl said people always looked like they wanted to talk to you, and the crowd was super eclectic, which all sounded interesting to me.

The first talk was about parasites and how they helped invent sex. Organisms that initially used the most efficient manner of cloning to pass down their genes, started having sex so that they could join forces with another set of genes to have stronger defenses against parasites. There were gross videos of cow dung parasites hitching rides with spitooning plant spores and caterpillar parasites doing mind control over their host and turning them into zombies before eating their way out. OH, also, untreated rabies may have contributed to the vampire myth. Apparently, rabies was rampant around the same time that stories of vampire attacks began to be popular in Eastern Europe. Rabies is a parasitic virus that makes the host unable to sleep, paranoid, unable to swallow water, and…in order to pass itself on to as many hosts as possible, horny. Yay, Dracula!

The next presenter was very well-spoken and had a pretty set of slides on aphrodisiacs. It was kind of unexciting though. Just about how food made in the shape of our sexual organs are aphrodisiacs, you know, oysters and mandrakes and such. I can’t remember anything else...

And the last presentation was about the history of masturbation and how it’s still not really ok. She cited the Pee Wee Herman incident (I was sitting with a friend of Pee Wee’s who thought it was hilarious), and Taylor Momsen talking about how much she loves her vibrator. Back in the day, graham crackers and corn flakes were invented to discourage masturbation because they thought bland food would do that. This was before the graham cracker had sugar added to it, which was a big fight between the Graham brothers.

I won something , which is rare. I won the masturbation presenter’s book “Getting Off” and a three pack of vegan lube in lavender, vanilla, and nude (?) flavors. The guy who hosts Mindshare reads all the little answers we write in when we buy our tickets and picks winners out of those. The question was: When I was a little I wanted to be… I said a mermaid or Indiana Jones.

There was one of those fully articulated silicone sex dolls sitting up on stage. She had enormous tits. Meangirl posed with her new best friend. We found that her fingers were too soft, like she was missing knuckles, and the rest of her body was a little hard. Also, I stuck one of my fingers in her mouth, and her teeth just gave. Like, they’re just a soft fringe of thin, teeth-shaped silicone. That creeped us out for some reason, but I’m sure it’s wonderful for the man who owns her.

Afterwards we played some handmade computer games and watched people play the crystal instrument in the Vortex Dome. Nobody talked to me at length, but I didn’t really feel compelled to talk to anyone either. It's still hunker down time.

Even More Astrology

2011-02-16T23:10:00.000-08:00

I was helping Meangirl organize her library when we came across a book someone gave her as a gift, The Secret Language of Relationships: Your Complete Personology Guide To Any Relationship With Anyone. How it works is you find the week of your birthday on the X-axis of the chart in front, and then find the person in question’s birthday week on the Y-axis, and then go to the page number at the cross section, where you can read a few paragraphs about you and the person’s relationship. Yeah, yeah, it’s more astrology bullshit, but I’m now at a loss as to how to approach this information because it is creepy. Creepy in its accuracy.

It says for example that my monster and me should not be together because we are prone to fighting of the critical and verbally abusive kind, and that he projects his dark side on me, and I project my deficiencies. It also says that we might’ve been smoldering as friends or co-workers before “suddenly bursting into flame.” He values my opinions and attention, and I may just tolerate his garrulousness, not realizing that I am equally talkative. We are “uncontrollable” and “moods of all sorts wreak havoc.” We work only if we let each other be free to take our own course, and I should remember who I am and not give up my identity so easily. Check, check, and check.

Here’s me and Saboteur, a fascinating relationship that no one understood: “This combination may be unusual in many respects – how the partners meet, the speed with which their relationship develops, and the experiential byways that they explore together are seldom of the ordinary sort. The relationship’s focus, too, is likely to be unconventional and in a way not at all put on for the benefit of the other partner or for friends or family, but intrinsically so… Love affairs in this combination are apt to be highly expressive… The affair draws these two like a magnet, and although it may be short and intense in length, after it is over the lovers may become friends… In whatever area, the matchup speaks of mutability, adaptability, and responsiveness to each other’s needs.” Checkity-check, again.

Anyway, the dilemma is, how much credence do I give the book? I mean, it kind of made me momentarily throw up my hands when I read about my latest, as if it was fated not to work, and maybe I shouldn’t be over here trying to learn something from the debacle. (Not really gonna happen; you know I’m going to learn something even if it kills me.) And, also, it’s one thing to look back at a relationship and read about it and agree that it was, in fact, that way, but what about future actions? For example, should I avoid going out with someone born on the week of July 3-10 because that would be the same pairing as OJ Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson (who was the Taurus-Gemini like me)? The book doesn't actually say that I would end up getting killed; it's just got a wonderful picture in the corner of the notorious couple. And do I surf Match.com looking for an Aries-Taurus because after reading every possible combination, that sounds like the best one for me? I mean, wouldn’t I just be a nutter if I started doing shit like that? But, the evidence! I could go on and on quoting the book and telling you how closely it describes that relationship. The book was written by a Dutch man, born the same week as me, who was at Yale Med studying psychiatry before veering off into astrology.

The best bet would probably be to give the book back to Meangirl and for me to veer off into another direction as well. ;)

Mousy Brown Women Are Important

2011-02-13T14:23:00.000-08:00

Photo by Warner Bros.

A miniscule and absurd event happened to me last week. It stuck in my craw for a few days, challenging me to make it a turning point in my life-long development of a healthy ego. As some of you know, I did not grow up with one, and so self-assertion has been a tumultuous journey for me. (I hate to admit it, but I just got hit over the head by god/the universe/coincidence, so I better.) Most people who know me nowadays would think I was amazingly unaware for saying something like that, since I can be aggressive, blunt, and downright intimidating. But that’s easy if I’m protecting my work, an idea, or my friends. Protecting my own emotional needs however, still (at this age!?) eludes me when faced with the mirror of a lover.

My ex-boyfriend and I had been failing miserably at being cordial to each other. It hadn’t been due to lack of trying. Every encounter started out in an effort to reach out pleasantly and always exploded into a firestorm. The innocent bystanders we have burned in the process now include his car (wrecked) and my sanity (tilted).

I just caught some of the Spike Jonze-Dave Eggers movie version of Where The Wild Things Are the other day, and I started bawling because it reminded me so much of the state of this relationship. The monsters are all infantile, emotional wrecks because they’re from the imagination of a super annoying kid who throws tantrums. The main monster, Carol, who is voiced by James Gandolfini, gets angry and hurt and jealous when the girl monster he likes brings home her two friends, who are owls named Bob and Terry. Carol takes it out on his best friend Douglas, a bird-like monster, by ripping Douglas’s arm off. Douglas is like, why’d you rip my arm off?! And Carol spits back, I didn’t rip your arm off, I was just holding your arm, YOU were the one who pulled away! Yeah, exactly. Uncontrollable monsters blaming each other for ripping each other apart.

In this last instance, my ex and I had been trying to be nice to each other at a happy hour and were just on the edge of getting snippy when three women walked through our party. Whenever strangers walk through our happy hour I either ask them to leave because we’ve reserved the area for a private party or alert someone else to the fact. I was looking at them and my ex said, what’s wrong? I said, oh nothing, just these women were walking by…

Then one of those three lurkers, a brown-haired, slightly overweight, nondescript, mousy woman looped back around and walked up to us from the other direction. I turned and politely looked at her and opened my hand in a question and before I could say anything, she promptly began asking my ex if she could get his phone number, not for her, but for her friend. He tried to nicely say that he couldn’t really do that right now, and I, I was just dumbfounded. Without going into the boring specifics, let me just say that the timing was miraculous, due to the things he and I had just, moments before, been discussing. I muttered that this was unbelievable and walked away in disbelief. One of my best friends saw what was happening and walked with me straight out of the bar, as he continued to try to object, and we passed the actual girl who wanted to give her number to him, another mousy brown number.

Needless to say, we ended up in a full blown inferno afterwards, which might not have ended had our friends not pulled us apart.

What I kept replaying in my mind was not the actual fight, but the moment the woman interrupted us. Why had I walked away? Why had I not turned to her and said, Excuse me, we’re having a serious and personal discussion here, can you please go away, bitch? I was kicking myself over and over and over, replaying the various ways I could have said the above. I started to think of that story about Faith Hill going off at the female fan who grabbed Tim McGraw’s balls. Or when Sheila Kelley wrote about calling the woman who gave her phone number to her actor husband and yelling at her to stay the eff away. Or Katey Sagal’s character on Sons of Anarchy teaching her son’s girlfriend that if she wanted the porn stars to lay off her boyfriend, she was going to have to make it known that he was taken. That kind of thing always gives me mixed feelings; it's so unseemly and level-stooping, isn’t it? But maybe there’s something there? Obviously, my particular case wasn’t about claiming a husband. It was just about feeling disrespected and interrupted and just, it was just inappropriate for what was happening between us.

I decided to try an exercise in emotional intelligence I had just read about. I asked myself, ok, what is it that I’m actually feeling here? Beleaguered, tired. Is that really an emotion? No. I feel like kicking myself. Yes, what is the feeling? I feel regret. Goddammit, I hate regret, regret sucks balls. It’s just an indication that you’re not living life the way you want to. But, I went on with the damn exercise. I asked my emotion, what information it was trying to give me.

“Regret, what are you trying to tell me?”

“I am trying to tell you that you should’ve stood your ground.”

“Well, yes –”

“You don’t have to be so polite and self-effacing that you actually ran away.”

“Thank you, but that is frikking obvious.”

“Yes, you should’ve stood up for your own needs in that moment.”

“I know, DUH.”

I stopped in my tracks. I started laughing at how retarded my emotions are. I mean, how simple. It is my brain that wants to get into the groove of obsessing and kicking. I let go. The feeling of regret lifted and changed to determination in that instant. I had to be vigilant against myself, yet again. I was going to have to pay even more attention! That exact kind of incident may never happen again. But tiny moments, like when people interrupt me in conversation, were going to have to be dealt with if I was going to be able to be in a healthy relationship. The woman in my yoga class who isn’t noticing that I have no space and needs to move her mat if she doesn’t want me on top of her; I need to ask her to do it. And, I did.

In other good news, I think the absurdity of the timing of the mousy brown women and the intensity of our last blow-up has really helped me and my monster reach our own turning point. Apologies have been forthcoming and a determination not to yell and scream at each other, no matter what, has replaced a sense of defensiveness. So, thank you so much, lame chicks. I should never doubt the importance of lame chicks. They have proven themselves time and again to be indispensable to personal growth.

Dishing It But Not Taking It

2011-02-04T22:56:00.000-08:00

I got an idea on Saturday for a little story, and then I made myself finish it on Sunday, so it's a little...concise. As usual, whenever I try my hand at short fiction, I realize I should probably be writing something else. The form is just so damn difficult. Here it is for your discomfort because I've been too busy to write anything else this week...

Dishing It But Not Taking It

When Estelle was in seventh grade, she inherited a hand-me-down pet rabbit from her friend Tanya. Tanya was getting a white Persian cat instead. Snowball was a well-adjusted and highly intelligent rabbit. He enjoyed living in suburban Southern California backyards, came when called, and greeted family members with a wet nose to the elbow or knee. He would pull down his ears with his lucky paws and luxuriously lick them clean. Sometimes he would run up and down the length of the yard at top speed and kick his hind legs to the side in a twist of glee. His albino coloring lent a blue-blooded quality to his countenance.

Sometimes a neighborhood cat would pounce atop the wooden fence or jump down daringly onto the very grass, eyeing Snowball with venom. He would freeze under the patio table in these instances, until the ever vigilant Estelle came flying out the screen door. Only then would Snowball give chase to the cat, confident that his backup was two steps behind him.

Estelle worried that perhaps Snowball was bored with his small parcel of land, his digging of holes, his eating of mom’s Fuchsia flowers. She used to hold him up high over her head, so that he could glance over the wooden fence into the exciting front yard and cul de sac street. She realized that she needed to stop tempting him with things he didn’t know about shortly thereafter when she noticed him standing at the same spot, jumping up and down, up and down, gaining more and more momentum and height until he had caught about three feet of air. Not enough to clear the fence by any means, but his single-minded determination concerned her.

A year or so later, Estelle inherited another hand-me-down rabbit. (The local grade school had a “farm,” a flagship achievement in terms of giving Orange County kids petting opportunities and rustic chores, but it produced a lot of unnecessary rabbits.) She was hesitant about this one, having to make the decision sight unseen since the owner was her father’s friend’s child, an unknown. And it was a girl, this rabbit. Estelle strategized that Snowball and her could take turns running free in the yard, and one of them could stay in their nighttime cage for part of the day. Maybe Snowball would enjoy some company.

Dusty, as she came to be called, was black and white, half the size of Snowball, and loud and mean. She growled when Estelle tried to refill her food bowl. She slammed her paws down on her pellets, as if Estelle was going to take her food away, inadvertently protesting the addition of any more. Dusty would not be held or handled. She had to be chased and cornered back into her cage, barking all the way home like a tiny dog that had lost its voice box from smoking too many cigarettes.

Snowball on the other hand, silently strained his head against the lid of his cage every moment that Dusty was out and about. It was only a matter of time before he opened the lid with the force of his desire. Estelle caught Snowball on top of Dusty one afternoon. Humping. She was horrified, the way a mother might’ve been horrified...

In fact, Estelle remembered at that moment, the day her mother walked in on her fantasizing about the Little Mermaid and Olive Oyl tied to the train tracks. She was seven, maybe. It wasn’t exactly clear to her what she was doing, except that it felt good to be lying there completely pantless while rolled up in a long piece of foam that her father had given her from some packing material, thinking about the Little Mermaid and her lack of legs, and the prince who dooms her by not recognizing her once she has them. There was also the real live mermaid from Fantasy Island, just a clip in the opening sequence maybe, but she had shells on her boobs, and she was swimming in a pink and turquoise sea. And Olive Oyl, or perhaps it was someone much prettier, whose legs were also often helplessly tethered. Her mother had walked into her room and gasped, “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know, just thinking,” she had said as she hurriedly unrolled out of the foam cylinder and pulled on her pants.

Estelle would not remember her rabbits however, several years into the future, her sophomore summer, when she was on a college prep program at the local state university. She was having a hard time fitting in with the other kids, kids from better high schools in Irvine or Newport Beach, richer and more confident and blasting Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” from their Walkmen. Would it be Walkmans or Walkmen? In any case, she liked to take her reading up to the main library and find a corner desk deep in the stacks. The desks had partitions built into them, so that three or four of them could be placed in a little pod, and no one would be bothered by the view of anyone else.

She was reading a short story by Woody Allen about a college boy who was having some issues with a girl and was envious of his friend’s coat. She didn’t much like Woody Allen’s movies, but this story was quite funny. What did it mean to be Jewish? Is Jewish an ethnicity or a religion or both? She heard someone set his books down at the desk next to hers. He made a lot of noise sitting down and opening a book, flipping the pages loudly and too quickly to be reading. And then she heard him drop a book and get on his hands and knees. He was staying on his hands and knees, breathing.

She was considering what he was seeing. Her sneakers, her defined calves, denim skirt, white panties. And then he got up again and went back to flipping pages. Estelle considered the many possibilities of how she could react to this fascinating situation and decided to watch it play out. If he tried to do anything besides look, she could scream. They were in a giant library after all, albeit an isolated corner.

He got on his hands and knees again. This time she heard the faint click of a flashlight. She could feel the wetness begin as she spread her legs just a little. This went on for some minutes. All of a sudden, the man scrambled back up and sat in his desk, and a woman was squeezing past him, excusing herself, and showing up next to Estelle’s desk. She said, “Hi, um, sorry, excuse me, can you look at this for me,” as she glared in the man’s direction. She had written a note: Please get up and come with me, I’ll explain later.

Estelle looked up at this concerned, bespectacled Asian woman, and shrugged innocently. She felt guilty and sheepish, but also slightly amused, wondering how the woman was going to explain herself. Estelle collected her belongings and followed her obediently. When they were safely on the stairs down to the first floor, the woman said that she thought the man sitting next to Estelle had been…acting suspiciously, and she wanted to know if there was some other place she could go to study. Estelle said definitely, she had some friends who were at the cafeteria, and she’d go meet them there. Oh, and thank you very much. The woman seemed relieved and a little proud of herself.

Yet Estelle, that afternoon when she was in junior high, could not take the most natural act of rabbits fucking. She had yelled and picked Snowball up off of Dusty and put him in his cage and then weighted his lid down with a heavy wooden board her father had collected from the park. She decided to give Dusty away the next day. And she would never want to have any children.

Indian Astrology, Enneagrams, and Hollywood

2011-01-29T00:35:00.000-08:00

A house on Gordon Street

A friend of mine from Goa sent me a link a while ago to a free Indian astrology site that gives some pretty awesome readings. For me, “love is the in-thing in life,” and I am “hell-bent on indulging in romance most of the time.” If I could “curtail my eagerness for having sex,” I might do better in business, in something like “shipping, import-export, manufacturing umbrellas or raincoats, or becoming an engineer.” If you would like your own Indian astrological reading, go here. You might have to fudge on the city and pick something like New York or Los Angeles because it doesn’t recognize smaller U.S. cities, but being born in New York or Los Angeles did not change my outcome.

Yes, I dressed like a Saturday night, Hollywood douche bag.

I remembered the Indian astrology because I’ve been reading about enneagrams, a personality test that is a little more straightforward than Myers Briggs but also a little more fluid and spiritual. You can download the free test here or another way to do it is to read the nine descriptions and decide which one sounds most like you. We apparently have parts of all nine personality types in us, with one dominating, and as we move towards health or stress, we move closer to another type in the way we act. I guessed I was a Seven, “The Enthusiast,” and the test confirmed it. Which explains my tendency to run around and go ape shit trying to entertain myself, my aversion to boredom and complainers, and the way I generate a lot of ideas with which I don’t follow through. It also confirms that slowing down, meditating, writing, and being more cerebral and analytical as I’ve been attempting to do, is what’s going to give me more joy and connection. Because it doesn’t take an umbrella-making import-expert engineer to see that running around is pretty meaningless...

The Mission Cantina

I get a little anxious when I’m not doing enough fun stuff though because I feel boring. If I find it important that other people be interesting, I put the most pressure on myself. Did you try the new taco joint, did you try the new salon, did you try the new dance-fitness activity, did you try the new lobster pita chip encrusted cupcake? I feel like if I’m not doing something, I won’t have anything to say. I need input to output, don’t I? But I don’t want to write about a chick who wears fancy downtown clothes and flits around eating lobster pita chip encrusted cupcakes. I want to write something beautiful and funny and meaningful. The interesting stuff is bigger than what I can physically manage to fit into a weekend.

The bar at The Bar, 5851 Sunset Blvd.

So I've got a lot of stories. If I sat down and got to work, I'd probably have enough material for it to be coming out of my ears. What do I do with it? Pitch magazine articles? A collection of semi-autobiographical short stories? A Los Angeles memoir? A screenplay? I've started them all. Which one do I finish first?

The amazing Aussie performer Andy Clockwise and V-Dawg

You don't have to answer me if you don't want to. I probably already know the answer. I'm going to stay in this weekend and try and find it.

Mas Malo, Downtown. Haha Hollywood, now we got our own ground beef and pickle tacos in a less depressing space.

Nicotine Prana

2011-01-20T13:48:00.000-08:00

This is not where I was meditating. I spaced out and forgot to get a picture.

I meditated for 2 hours. TWO HOURS! Meditation is the kind of thing, like a Thai massage, that seems difficult to describe from the generalities you get when you ask people about it. “Yeah, it was great, it was kind of amazing!” Or, “It was good, she was strong, she stepped on my back.” Such dissatisfying answers make you think there was a shit load more going on. But actually, meditation, Thai massage, yoga, even the moving meditation of pole dancing, all these things I’ve liked to do are variations on the same thing. Quieting the mind, accessing space, the moment. In a way, nothing is happening, at the same time, you’re performing the gigantic act of becoming more yourself.

This rare meditation class was held by my friend Toastman at the Aikido Center of Los Angeles, down a dead part of Main Street just east of Chinatown. The space reminded me of my grandma’s house with its antique wall hangings, scrolls, cabinetry, sliding doors, swords, and the old Sensei’s shrine. I got lucky, and a zabuton (those flat Japanese floor pillows) with one of those padded wooden meditation benches was open. The bench is low and its two legs are slanted down at an angle, so you can put your butt on it, while folding your legs under the bench, so that you’re not sitting on your knees. I’ve never been so comfortable sitting up!

But, we started off on our backs, our knees bent and tied against each other, breathing deeply, and doing the usual letting each part of our body go. For some reason, each body part was disintegrating as I released it, so I could no longer feel it, which was a very pointed and physical experience I haven’t had before. As I was moving through my toes, they were all disappearing until I only had my pinkie toes left. (My stomach however was oddly gurgling periodically and audibly. Didn’t stop until we were sitting up again.) Then we did two sets of pelvic breathing, which was amazing for my lower back troubles, melting away all the pain just by pushing air into the small.

We sat up and continued breathing for a while…at one point, I fought myself wanting to be a good performer, wanting to be a good meditator...stop it! I also did a little meditation homework assignment from my relationship book which was letting go of any hurt, shame, or resentment against any ex-lovers, and then imagining what it would feel like to be in the presence of real love.

Then we listened to Toastman talk about space, “Hmm, it seems so difficult to talk about space…space, and the awareness of space…,” and then we breathed some more, first envisioning a sheaf of wheat opening on the inhale, and then disintegrating that conceptualization on the exhale. And then we let go of that intensity and just sat and breathed, sat and breathed, blank blank blank...

Truth be told, I have to confess that I first got into meditating because of man troubles. I was always curious about meditating, but I didn’t actually start practicing until I read Katherine Woodward Thomas’s “Calling in the One,” the fabled new age relationship advice book that is practically a character in this blog. Maybe I should give it a moniker like I do my friends. Here’s an excerpt:

“The ability to remain somewhat centered and balanced in response to a perceived threat (as opposed to becoming reactive/and or explosive), or to maintain a certain degree of calm in the face of disappointment (rather than becoming dramatic and defensive), is the mark of a person who is prepared to create a healthy, sustainable loving relationship. Those who know how to avoid becoming combative in reaction to stress make better, more reliable partners than those who don’t. It pays for us to actively cultivate these abilities, and there is no more reliable way to do this than through a daily practice of prayer and meditation. It’s the direct route – the fast track to developing the emotional maturity one needs in order to ensure a more successful union.”

I usually believe I’m pretty emotionally mature but this is either because I’m alone or because I’m in a relationship with a man who requires some distance. When I’m with someone I feel comfortable with, it seems that my emotional maturity likes to fling itself out the window. Because, sure, I can get reactive, explosive, dramatic, and defensive. It’s probably just an issue of over-correction, a habit of either letting my emotions run completely rampant, dictating when and how I do anything, or holding onto them so tightly, I feel like a stewing bratwurst, straining against my skin. Careening is a very common psychological problem, a human problem that just needs some balance, some breathing, some sitting in silence.

By the time I opened my eyes, my body was doing that little circular rocking that supposedly happens when the prana is really flowing. Another first for me. Very subtle, very spacey, a peaceful joy, must wait to drive. A few of us from class went to Pho 87, and I topped it all off with Vietnamese rocket fuel and condensed milk, the super sludgy café sua da, which just about catapulted me into real space. AWESOME!