An Extra Door

The search for meaning is a cure for insanity

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In 2006 I wrote this about a man I can't believe I ever loved Part II

In 2006 I wrote this about a man I can’t believe I ever loved Part II

The sun pushes the clouds up extending them way above my head Pink light spreads like layers of cotton candy across the sky. I’m not angry with him I don’t blame him I don’t ever want to be near him again. I want to be with him again. I cannot see my life without him My heart told me to wait And then asked me if it had ever been wrong before. No, it had been right before. It told me to get away…

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In 2006 I wrote this about a man I can't believe I ever loved Part I

In 2006 I wrote this about a man I can’t believe I ever loved Part I

I woke to your voice clinging to my thoughts a web of tangled conversations shaken loose by the storm in my head. You once told me I thought like a man Not the thing you want to hear from a lover But then, you’d have known that. It’s my birthday today and I know you remember I feel your thoughts upon my body so dense I can barely lift myself from the bed. But I do not call and I wonder if you…

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Management Meeting

I found notes today from a meeting a long time ago: Ask questions. I’m responsible for their work. Ask them what they are used to. Communicate what I am used to. Ask, “Who else are you answering to?” How often are we touching base? Set meetings. Processes are important. Set process. How do we get there? Cast a vision for how to get there. Relationship is essential–foundational Talk more during…

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The Place Where You Started

The Place Where You Started

As we move toward a production here in Los Angeles I wanted to write up an analysis into the deeper themes of this piece. I don’t think I was fully in touch with what story we were telling when we wrote it a year ago. Now, with some distance, I’ve gotten my head around it a bit better. For those curious, here is the trailer and the full production staged in Portland last fall.  …

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Open Letter to Marc Maron

Open Letter to Marc Maron

Dear Marc Maron, I considered writing you personally, but then you wouldn’t respond and I’d feel terrible for having bared myself to a stranger I’ve projected expectations on. Like you owe me something. Like just because I love your work and it means something profound to me that makes me special or interesting. It makes me regular. Plus, I’m a writer Marc. I’m a creative. I’ve spent my life…

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City of Industry

America swirls the drain. The world is run by criminals. I don’t know where I’m going creatively. Chipped nail polish. Age. Weight gain. Time pulls me to the grave. OK, that’s a drag of a thing to write. But I don’t know where I’m going creatively. I saw a monkey at the San Diego Zoo studying the feces on his hands. It fascinated him. He shared a habitat with the orangoutangs. The oldest one, the…

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Orangutan

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At 30,000 Feet

At 30,000 feet, after the pilot announces cruising altitude and turns off the seat belt sign, people change. It’s a small shift, a quiet adjustment, intangible even to them. In the 90’s and early 2000’s, before the proliferation of personal media devices, airlines showed outdated movies and cancelled television shows. You purchased your headphones for two dollars and plugged into the armrest to…

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She could sell swampland to a frog

She sold $1000 worth of makeup and brushes on the regular. This meant she got more hours than other freelancers. Her bosses loved her. Charming, pretty, forceful, but with a smile, she could sell s…

#cosmetics, #makeupsales, #makeupjobs, #makeupartist

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She could sell swampland to a frog

She could sell swampland to a frog

She sold $1000 worth of makeup and brushes on the regular. This meant she got more hours than other freelancers. Her bosses loved her. Charming, pretty, forceful, but with a smile, she could sell swampland to a frog. Except her sales carried hefty returns. Buyer’s remorse hit her clients hard. No matter. As a freelancer she’d be gone by the time the products came back and smack the associate, who…

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More James Ellroy than La La Land

A town too small, yet too big. In love with itself yet too insecure to appreciate anything new borne from its womb.

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Satan, God, and a club called Medusa's

Entire selves emerge in the fire of our deepest connections.

Following the fire, Medusa’s was no longer. In its place an office building. Unfinished business gets in your DNA. Like that guy from high school I almost loved, but feared. He symbolizes much of what I didn’t do and now regret. He’s in my dreams from time to time. Because I don’t do what it is I want to do. His ghost lingers over all I’ve let drift. If I could go back I’d change…but what would I…

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Julio

Jose. Juan. No, Julio. Perhaps. I remember images, but not names. Never names. I worked at The Bailiwick Repertory, a Chicago theater in Boys town that featured plays and baudy shows celebrating the LGBTQ experience long before it was an acronym. It was a holdover from the 80’s, when the transgendered weren’t acknowledged, much less talked about, and being gay was a death sentence. The Bailiwick…

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Ruminations on the Why of It

Ruminations on the Why of It

TCRiggs wrote a response to my last post I thought worth sharing. A personal essayist struggling to find her voice might find the following interesting. The essential question, “How much time does one give a thing before it’s safe to write about it?” 20 years? Perhaps. She also suggests perhaps turning to fiction. She keeps a level of anonymity on her blog. But what if it’s too late for that?…

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One Potent Mash Up

One Potent Mash Up

Go for the jugular or don’t go at all. If you don’t write from the gut, then what’s the point? Losing friends, family members, jobs, means you’re on the correct path. But you better be right, even when you make mistakes. It better be true. If it’s not. If it’s made up. If it’s cruel for cruelty’s sake or to make yourself look good, then you don’t deserve the title of writer. But I’m not a…

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Tip Out Head

Everything’s been a little ish lately. My head is a sieve. My sense of direction is like a bat whose lost her homing device. That’s it. No homing device. I was late to the vet. Because I hate the vet. Because Chloe hates the vet. Everyone hates going to the doctor. But not everyone loses hair. And she loses hair she will not grow back. I was late to a job interview…a good one…so there’s no real…

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Nordstrom. Yep. I wrote it. Nordstrom.

Nordstrom fired Ivanka. But Nordstrom didn't fire me.

I worked at Nordstrom. I can finally be frank about that. While an employee I was bound by  a handbook regulation: “We don’t talk about our clients or the company on social media,” a pip-squeaky wide-eyed child from HR explained after she’d been told I’d written a provocative post about a client. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I gushed. “Absolutely. I’ll take it down right now! I’m so embarrassed! I just,…

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