When I sit down to write fictional stories, the setting is always the same, and the setting is way out west in California. I don't know other places well enough, and even if I grow to, which I might now that I live in the Midwest, my bones quite literally grew to their capacity in…
Tag: health
Mother Shower
I had a dream the other night about a brand-new mother in some nebulous ancient culture being showered with immense love, affection, celebration, and tender care. Flowered garlands and feet massaged in oil abounded. Certainly, attention was also paid to the small child, but much of the community in this dream was tending to the…
And I Will Tell About It
What do we share when we stop hiding ourselves away? This is, of course, the internet, social media, the shame over guilt culture of appearance and perfection, and in these realms we skirt the truth, muddy it up, maybe forgo it all together. What happens when we decide, I'm going to share it? We're free.…
Could You Be Loved
George Bernard Shaw wrote, "if you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you best teach it to dance." Oh how some of us toil to be rid of our pasts or our character flaws or our deepest, darkest secrets. Maybe instead, we ought to hang out and have a little fun with…
Unmapped
"When you're getting better, it's a jagged line." -Jenny Lewis Maybe it's just what happens in your mid twenties, but shit, I highly doubt it - there was this black jumprope I had tangled up with the wires of an old Nintendo 64 shoved deep into my closet, and for a year I imagined it…
The Loss of Anger
"I never get angry. I grow a tumor instead." -Woody Allen As a child in the nineties, I idolized women who were angry and restless and lived to write and sing their fury. Fiona Apple, Gwen Stefani, Erykah Badu, Alanis Morrissette, Lauryn Hill, Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, Shirley Manson - even Madonna (before she became an enlightened…
Disarm
Dian Fossey, famous zoologist and anthropologist, who spent an extensive amount of time studying gorillas in their natural habitat, came to understand that the best way to approach the magnificent creatures was without weapons of any kind. It was a daring undertaking - gorillas are potentially dangerous; no doubt their strength and size could cause…
Another, 1
"In each of us there is another whom we do not know." Carl Jung You must write every day to save your life. if you do not, your mind will get the best of you. You will think these dark thoughts. You will fall into such despair. You will give up. You are not an…
New
When I was seventeen, I got black out drunk on New Years Eve and found myself in a precarious sexual encounter with a man who I thought was my friend. I went numb after. It was 2003. Endless tequila shots by the wet bar before the party, to steady the nerves. I was toast. My life…
The Circus
"This is the circus. Everybody's trying to not go home." To be human is to be a social creature, and it is an endless adventure and collection of lessons to interact with other beings and establish relationship. I have learned over time that relationships can work like a drug - we get so high on…
