Kim and I were exhausted after our ritual, like we had taken a night ride in the velvet of darkness in a kingdom where the boundaries of space and time were tossed into the sea.
Is it strange that I want to shrink my Mom and carry her in my pocket so I can have her with me all the time, like a pocket full of starlight that I can throw up in the sky when it seems especially dark?
Packing tip: if you are traveling with large hats, don’t pack them, wear them.
Wouldn’t it be dreamy if people started wearing large hats while traveling? Out with sweatpants and messy buns… in with large hats and beautiful travel attire!
Whenever I enter a hat shop while traveling, my fantasy world kicks into overdrive, and with each one I try on, I become different characters dropped into fantastic worlds.
I inevitably fall in love with the biggest, most ornate ones, and I’m overcome with that feeling of “My life will not be complete without you, oh darling hat!”
2021 was the first September 14 of my life where I didn’t send flowers or a gift to my Mom for her birthday. She’s in Memory Care, and the last two years, I sent her bouquets of flowers that she never received. She doesn’t really
Am I developing clairvoyant powers? Or was it just coincidence?
Here’s what happened: Yesterday I went out to my back deck in the forest, surrounded by waterfalls and flowers, and laid out my yoga mat. I lit candles and …
’s been 22 days since my hip replacement surgery, and the hardest part is slowing down. I want to be healed. I want to dance, to stretch, to slide into bed without tweaking pain, to sleep on any side I choose. I want to jump into the ocean and then slide into a hot bubble bath.
Because I felt so crushed, so destroyed, I started to create, all day every.
I painted my longing for strength, I danced my grief through my body, and I wrote, faster, harder, wilder…
I just want to be next to her, to read to her, put my arms around her, to feel my heart near hers, and pretend that her brain will come back and she will remember who I am, even for one bittersweet moment.
Last week I attended my first wedding as a divorcee, and I wasn’t expecting the cascading waves of mixed emotions. I was happy for my niece of course, and I do adore romance and beauty, but there were moments at the wedding that were zings of pain, like little divorce bees were flying around, stinging me here and there…
A few minutes later, I heard the sound of a saxophone and finger-snapping and saw the crowd of sweaty bodies parting to make way for two vastly different oddballs: a tall wild-haired saxophone player named Spyder Mittleman, and the very short Chuck E., who was hunched over, snapping his fingers like a Beatnik in a dark seedy poetry bar who has just heard “Howl” for the first time. They both wore sunglasses, and they took their time sauntering through the crowd, whipping them into a frenzy before they climbed onto the stage and launched into their witty-Louis Prima-New Orleans-style-rockabilly-blues. I slid off my barstool and started to dance and didn’t finish until they played their very last song, Goddamn Liar. Chuck E. would stand onstage, smoking his cigarette, wearing his sunglasses, and every time the band would pause, he would say, “Goddamn Liar.” Then he would usually shout, “Get the hell out of my gas station!” and exit the stage to exuberant screaming and applause.
As I drove home that night in my bug, my ear drums muted from the loud music, I rolled down my windows so that the warm gardenia-scented air could cool the glistening sweat off my arms. I thought my co-server was right: Chuck E. was God, and if not “the” God, he was “a” god, an insanely talented, mischievous version of Dionysus, reigning over Monday nights in Hollywood.
