A friend of mine made fun of me recently for making everything into an anniversary. I don’t think this is my fault. Facebook is always reminding me, On This Day. Instagram has created so many hashtag holidays I swear it is always National Something I Love Day {Dog, Donuts, Ice Cream, Best Friends, Siblings, &c &c &c}. I live in…
Lately I’ve Been Listening to the Oceans
Lately I’ve been listening to the Oceans: Frank, Vuong, Pacific Lately I’ve been writing from all angles. It’s a word I can’t spell anymore without writing angels first, then deleting it. I used to write the name of this city as Los Angles until I started to hear it in Spanish in my head and never mistook a godly creature…
Los Angeiversary: A Love Letter
Four years ago today, I left my hotel in Overton, Nevada and drove south on I-15 toward LA. By the time I hit the California state line, I was seriously close to running out of gas. On a wing and a prayer I made it to the gas station in Cima. I know this route on I-15 now like the…
The End of Being 27
This week I turn 28 years old, but I’m not quite ready to let go of 27 yet. 27 has always been my favorite number, and I had a feeling for a long time that my 27th year would be an important one. Indeed, that has turned out to be true in ways I could never have imagined. I turned…
/You wanna light it now, the candle from both ends/
This song came on while I was eating by myself at a restaurant up the street from my house earlier today. I was reading Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely and it struck me that I have the opposite sentiment in my heart right now. I miss being lonely. I am having an instinct to narrativize here that I…
The Beginning is Near
It’s been awhile. I think this is because I was sad for a few months. It is much harder for me to write when I am sad. I’m not even entirely sure what I’ve been doing with my time. Where it’s gone. What hole it slipped into and never came out of. A friend of mine often makes jokes about…
March Sadness
I was watching The Walking Dead this evening, and at the end of a particularly heart wrenching scene there was this sad, haunting song. I looked it up and it’s Nicole Dollanganger’s “Chapel.” I’ve never heard of this person or this song, but as I started tearing up, I began to think more extensively about music and sadness. I met…
Bipolar II & Never Fitting a Narrative
I was speaking with my therapist of five years earlier this week and she finally put a name to a pattern of behavior I’ve experienced for as long as I can remember. I asked her what it meant to be bipolar II, and felt for a moment like I was being diagnosed with something, a sickness. But I quickly remembered…
Self-Portrait as Library (Redux)
I was in Skylight Books today, which is often a place I visit when I’m particularly restless or needing to fulfill an urge I can usually only satiate with something destructive like alcohol, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of the book I was looking for. I’d actually gone there to buy Adrienne Rich’s Diving Into…
The End of the Beginning of the Year
I think what I’m trying to do is get away with something. Or a lot of somethings. One of those things I’m trying to get away with is writing a book that is not so long and not so focused, but that meanders through the desert, or through the many deserts I’ve inhabited. All the words I use right now…