"The switch thrown as raw lightening arcs down the line; violent, consuming the cold form upon the table. Within moments, the power is diminished. By the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs..."
- Mary Shelley
Obessed with Drum and Bass
Hollywood, CA
Hollywood, CA
June 27, 2006
Happy Father's Day
Santa Fe, NM
Santa Fe, NM
June 19, 2006
My father has two children and very strong hands. He built a sand box for me in the back yard and when I had dug all the worms out and wore all the sand castles out, he then added on a swing. My dad had time every nite after super to push me on the swing. I would say "make it go higher, dad” which turned to inevitably, "not that high, dad”. My dad built the house I grew up in, too.
When I wrecked my first car one winter, my dad showed up and was so scared that all he could do was yell and be angry. I flipped that farm truck on the ice and crushed the entire cab in … it must have been scary for him to see. My dad and I bought another cab, sanded it down to bare metal, bondo-ed the thin spots, sanded and primered and painted and painted it candy apple red and put the whole damn thing back together ... together.
He also taught me how to roof. Most girls don't know that word can be a verb.
Today, as I sat down at the New Mexican cafe, I wished I was in Michigan cooking up dad's favorite omelet and bringing it to him on a tray with a napkin, a carnation and a smile before he even got out of bed. But I'm a long ways away from Michigan in Santa Fe, and decided to trust that my mom would feed dad properly in my absence and the best thing I could do would be to nourish myself too.
So I and my friend (another father with strong hands and two children) chose a table in the Body Cafe in Santa Fe, across from the outdoor patio where not a soul sat – diners preferring the air conditioned and aromatic indoor accoutrements to the hot rot iron arid desert seating – even it there were umbrellas for shade.
Though the Sun did still stretch its furnace fingers through window panes all the way to our table, something about the Body Cafe in Santa Fe felt moist - even aquatic. Perhaps it was the spa on premises, with blue massage rooms, shower tiles and wall paintings. Or perhaps the moisture came from the vast yoga studio with mirrors, sprung bamboo floors, and natural light. Maybe it was a kitchen that prepared 90% organic, plant-based recipes of which my date and I enjoyed the mushroom-potent raw lasagna, high-vibration raw Pad Thai with water-rich zucchini noodles, or our favorite: a mountain of crisp greens topped with light-bright agave/mustard dressing. We fed each other with chop sticks and lived vicariously through the others’ enjoyment of each bite.
Maybe the Body Cafe's perceived moistness, in the harsh high desert climate, was the feeling of abundance all of these things combined evoked. I felt like I had enough of everything to spare. In fact, I felt like an inexhaustible fountain of pure emotion and creative intent and I gazed at this man sitting next to me and put my hand on his face. His face - distinguished with lines from a life well lived. Eyes somehow open and clear after a lifetime of heavy experience. A touch - a hand on my thigh - expressing comfort with my body as well as his own. And I said to him, this dad also a million miles away from his daughter and son whom reside with their mother - I said to him, "happy father's day".
And I knew...
I knew that there are a lot of fathers out there who need to know that they are doing a good job. They want their children to express appreciation before children even know how to appreciate, so that they feel that they are being good fathers even when they get only every other weekend and holidays. I thanked him then for being a father because the truth is, I saw him once go to his napping 12 year old son and hold his hand on his son's heart. I knew that boy was lucky to have a dad like this man, even if he can't push him on the swing set after super every nite.
You know, my father and mother love each other deeply, and that means my dad got the chance to build me a house to live in, be at all my basketball games and get omlets brought to him in bed. Whether he is a bad guy or a good guy, a child's father is her sole concept of maleness and every man in her life from all until eternity will be a version of or against that role model. My dad is a good dad because he is a good man. He insisted on happiness and love in his life. Every man I will ever know will be compared to that image of maleness. Thank you, dad. That is the most important thing you could have done for me.
So today, to all the men who understand, instead of wishing you a happy father’s day, I wish you a happy fathers’ day. Being happy and in love is the most important thing you can let's us see you doing.
When I wrecked my first car one winter, my dad showed up and was so scared that all he could do was yell and be angry. I flipped that farm truck on the ice and crushed the entire cab in … it must have been scary for him to see. My dad and I bought another cab, sanded it down to bare metal, bondo-ed the thin spots, sanded and primered and painted and painted it candy apple red and put the whole damn thing back together ... together.
He also taught me how to roof. Most girls don't know that word can be a verb.
Today, as I sat down at the New Mexican cafe, I wished I was in Michigan cooking up dad's favorite omelet and bringing it to him on a tray with a napkin, a carnation and a smile before he even got out of bed. But I'm a long ways away from Michigan in Santa Fe, and decided to trust that my mom would feed dad properly in my absence and the best thing I could do would be to nourish myself too.
So I and my friend (another father with strong hands and two children) chose a table in the Body Cafe in Santa Fe, across from the outdoor patio where not a soul sat – diners preferring the air conditioned and aromatic indoor accoutrements to the hot rot iron arid desert seating – even it there were umbrellas for shade.
Though the Sun did still stretch its furnace fingers through window panes all the way to our table, something about the Body Cafe in Santa Fe felt moist - even aquatic. Perhaps it was the spa on premises, with blue massage rooms, shower tiles and wall paintings. Or perhaps the moisture came from the vast yoga studio with mirrors, sprung bamboo floors, and natural light. Maybe it was a kitchen that prepared 90% organic, plant-based recipes of which my date and I enjoyed the mushroom-potent raw lasagna, high-vibration raw Pad Thai with water-rich zucchini noodles, or our favorite: a mountain of crisp greens topped with light-bright agave/mustard dressing. We fed each other with chop sticks and lived vicariously through the others’ enjoyment of each bite.
Maybe the Body Cafe's perceived moistness, in the harsh high desert climate, was the feeling of abundance all of these things combined evoked. I felt like I had enough of everything to spare. In fact, I felt like an inexhaustible fountain of pure emotion and creative intent and I gazed at this man sitting next to me and put my hand on his face. His face - distinguished with lines from a life well lived. Eyes somehow open and clear after a lifetime of heavy experience. A touch - a hand on my thigh - expressing comfort with my body as well as his own. And I said to him, this dad also a million miles away from his daughter and son whom reside with their mother - I said to him, "happy father's day".
And I knew...
I knew that there are a lot of fathers out there who need to know that they are doing a good job. They want their children to express appreciation before children even know how to appreciate, so that they feel that they are being good fathers even when they get only every other weekend and holidays. I thanked him then for being a father because the truth is, I saw him once go to his napping 12 year old son and hold his hand on his son's heart. I knew that boy was lucky to have a dad like this man, even if he can't push him on the swing set after super every nite.
You know, my father and mother love each other deeply, and that means my dad got the chance to build me a house to live in, be at all my basketball games and get omlets brought to him in bed. Whether he is a bad guy or a good guy, a child's father is her sole concept of maleness and every man in her life from all until eternity will be a version of or against that role model. My dad is a good dad because he is a good man. He insisted on happiness and love in his life. Every man I will ever know will be compared to that image of maleness. Thank you, dad. That is the most important thing you could have done for me.
So today, to all the men who understand, instead of wishing you a happy father’s day, I wish you a happy fathers’ day. Being happy and in love is the most important thing you can let's us see you doing.
Deperate Serenade
Hollywood, CA
Hollywood, CA
June 11, 2006
If you were here you'd hold me, right?
It seems like I remember that you have the softest skin. Not like mine. Not like mine at all.
If you were here I know you wouldn't say nothing. Much. You'd just be wide open like the June windows. No screens at all. And yes, the moth flies in. But I never saw anything wrong with that.
What's the difference between outside and inside anyway? You'd just open your windows for me and I might just choose to wander around in the lawn lookin' up two stories, kinda nervous, pacing and serenading and really wanting your attention.
Why don't I just fly right up?
It seems like I remember one time you were doing something, like trying to work or something - you had the sunglasses on and everything - and there I was standing near you and then we looked at each other and then your sunglasses came off and your jeans too. We left my bottoms on.
But I'm not quite sure. The memory is fading. I'm loosing touch. I'm going away from all the things.
I'm pretty sure you remember. I'm pretty sure you can remind me. I'm pretty sure you're still real and you would love me all the way to the light and beyond, oh my moth's wings, I will fly us in and through, but you've got to hang on to me. Don't let go. Don't let me go alone. You would hold me, right? If you were here?
It seems like I remember that you have the softest skin. Not like mine. Not like mine at all.
If you were here I know you wouldn't say nothing. Much. You'd just be wide open like the June windows. No screens at all. And yes, the moth flies in. But I never saw anything wrong with that.
What's the difference between outside and inside anyway? You'd just open your windows for me and I might just choose to wander around in the lawn lookin' up two stories, kinda nervous, pacing and serenading and really wanting your attention.
Why don't I just fly right up?
It seems like I remember one time you were doing something, like trying to work or something - you had the sunglasses on and everything - and there I was standing near you and then we looked at each other and then your sunglasses came off and your jeans too. We left my bottoms on.
But I'm not quite sure. The memory is fading. I'm loosing touch. I'm going away from all the things.
I'm pretty sure you remember. I'm pretty sure you can remind me. I'm pretty sure you're still real and you would love me all the way to the light and beyond, oh my moth's wings, I will fly us in and through, but you've got to hang on to me. Don't let go. Don't let me go alone. You would hold me, right? If you were here?
Let Me Out
Hollywood, CA
Hollywood, CA
June 08, 2006
Damn dopamine. Why do I get so much of it?
Damn consciousness, why do I got more than my share?
There's a reason we have a cap on our thinking and that is because if we really knew the truth ...
Sometimes this body, that usually gives me so much pleasure just feels way too small and limiting for a being this size. I am vast and I know it is the damn dopamine talking.
But I'm tired of this containment. I'm tired of this ego building, which as a Libra, as an intellect, as a blessed one, I have done so well, like only the best of humans. Every performer has an ego complex. Good performers are self-defined.
There are no bad performers.
But I am the best. And then this presence I've built up around myself, that I can not see outside of nor exist outside of, for yes, I have created myself. This presence doesn't work and the thing that knows where we're going tries to self-destruct this container and all the decorations, including words, hanging off of it so that it can get out to its full size.
Oh, damn truth, why do you keep chasing me with your massive paradoxes and your endless insights and why can't I just be normal, like the rest of the entire world appears to be, just cooking dinner and watching the television and setting the alarm clock instead of this gob damned feeling that I am the chosen one and there is something really important to do that I am missing the entire point of and always will until I finally get out of this fragile, stoopid looking, weak, fake container?
Oh, please bless me with another day of blindness so I can enjoy holding hands once more before I expand out and beyond.
Damn consciousness, why do I got more than my share?
There's a reason we have a cap on our thinking and that is because if we really knew the truth ...
Sometimes this body, that usually gives me so much pleasure just feels way too small and limiting for a being this size. I am vast and I know it is the damn dopamine talking.
But I'm tired of this containment. I'm tired of this ego building, which as a Libra, as an intellect, as a blessed one, I have done so well, like only the best of humans. Every performer has an ego complex. Good performers are self-defined.
There are no bad performers.
But I am the best. And then this presence I've built up around myself, that I can not see outside of nor exist outside of, for yes, I have created myself. This presence doesn't work and the thing that knows where we're going tries to self-destruct this container and all the decorations, including words, hanging off of it so that it can get out to its full size.
Oh, damn truth, why do you keep chasing me with your massive paradoxes and your endless insights and why can't I just be normal, like the rest of the entire world appears to be, just cooking dinner and watching the television and setting the alarm clock instead of this gob damned feeling that I am the chosen one and there is something really important to do that I am missing the entire point of and always will until I finally get out of this fragile, stoopid looking, weak, fake container?Oh, please bless me with another day of blindness so I can enjoy holding hands once more before I expand out and beyond.
Like You
Hollywood, CA
Hollywood, CA
June 06, 2006
I admire you so much, I want to be you. I spend all my time being like you, then get mad at myself for not doing a good enough job at it. When the entire reason I admired you in the first place is because you are perfectly different than me.
I like you.
And I'm gonna let you be you and I'll just be me. It's so much easier that way and I am so much better at it. The best in fact. The only one, indeed, who can possibly do the job.
Please be you. I need you to be you. I can't do it for you.
I like you.
And I'm gonna let you be you and I'll just be me. It's so much easier that way and I am so much better at it. The best in fact. The only one, indeed, who can possibly do the job.
Please be you. I need you to be you. I can't do it for you.
Record Highs
Santa Fe, NM
Santa Fe, NM
June 02, 2006
I remember poking my grubby little girl fingers in. When it was hot enough to boil the pavement, I would risk permanent stains on my shorts and the soon-to-follow maternal scoldings to pick pop puncture the tar bubbles with my grimy miniature finger nails on the Dead End street where I grew up. My five year old mind thought I understood something about being a dinosaur. I'm pretty sure I didn't.
The asphalt is boiling in Santa Fe today. I can smell it. A black toxic perfume trapping me in the heat, like a dear in headlights, like a lizard in hostile consideration, like a white skinned human in the high desert, 7,000 feet up, experiencing lack of oxygen, sun stroke and heat exhaustion as record highs are recorded at 94 degrees Fahrenheit and she pauses, still ... unable to move for fear of a relentless climate's demise.
To peril by dehydration. Oh, to have the life sucked out of you. The water is the life and I am a bored, rebelling teenage raisin huffing chemical fumes for the sheer headache of it. I drink more water again and my skin splits open in various places - a washed up movie star with plaster of Paris cosmetic foundation and flakey glass shard lip implants. Maybe I do understand dinosaurs after all.
I entertain myself on this New Mexican sidewalk curb by observing heat waves making optical illusions on the horizon - bending light - literal time travel. Can you imagine the visuals we will get if global warming continues, or if we were suddenly in the lava path of an active volcano, or if some kind of Bikram Yoga class went arry: Standing Bow like a dish of Jell-O, gyrating yogis and fun house mirrors. Hallucinations based on the retina. Upsidedown and hitting the back of my parched desert brain.
The asphalt is boiling in Santa Fe today. I can smell it. A black toxic perfume trapping me in the heat, like a dear in headlights, like a lizard in hostile consideration, like a white skinned human in the high desert, 7,000 feet up, experiencing lack of oxygen, sun stroke and heat exhaustion as record highs are recorded at 94 degrees Fahrenheit and she pauses, still ... unable to move for fear of a relentless climate's demise.
To peril by dehydration. Oh, to have the life sucked out of you. The water is the life and I am a bored, rebelling teenage raisin huffing chemical fumes for the sheer headache of it. I drink more water again and my skin splits open in various places - a washed up movie star with plaster of Paris cosmetic foundation and flakey glass shard lip implants. Maybe I do understand dinosaurs after all.
I entertain myself on this New Mexican sidewalk curb by observing heat waves making optical illusions on the horizon - bending light - literal time travel. Can you imagine the visuals we will get if global warming continues, or if we were suddenly in the lava path of an active volcano, or if some kind of Bikram Yoga class went arry: Standing Bow like a dish of Jell-O, gyrating yogis and fun house mirrors. Hallucinations based on the retina. Upsidedown and hitting the back of my parched desert brain.
