Author’s note: This is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago as I was developing a workshop called Radical Embodiment. I came across it again recently and thought of it again today, as I watched the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and felt my body respond: releasing years of fear and… Read More Radical Embodiment
A few years ago I spent six months living in Los Angeles, the city I came of age in, the city I had been trying to get back to for more than two decades. I was there to finish a novel, a project that had been in the works for years, and a dear friend… Read More Dark green quiet.
“Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.” Emily Dickinson Fiona’s Story
It’s December 2017. I’m at a windswept campground just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, about to travel to Baja California in a three-vehicle convoy of women I barely know. Lori hands me a walkie talkie so we can communicate while we’re driving. “I’m Big Bear. Oso Grande,” she says. “Cami is Little Bear, Osito.” She… Read More Call Me Jenny Quest
It started as a goof. I saw the photo on Facebook (posted by Peritronia Espinel): a New Year’s street banner, photographed from the back so that “2019” reads as “eros.” I shared the on Facebook with a little blurb saying I’d been pondering my Word of the Year — maybe this was it! I had,… Read More 2019: the year of eros
Blinded but not broken. Fiona came into my life in 2008. I had just lost my two beloved cats, Maggie and Bebop, who had been with me for 18 years, through graduate school, marriage, divorce. Utterly bereft, I resisted the many well-meaning attempts to give me new cats. One of the biggest cat-pushers in my… Read More Fiona the Wonder Pug
Saturday, August 18. Backstage at Portland’s Newmark Theater at FloatCon 2018: I’m miked up, and I’m amped up. Wandering around and then dancing around, shrugging my shoulders, shaking out my hands, trying to slough off the energy that is surging like a tsunami through my body. I’m about to go onstage and talk in front… Read More Float Con 2018
We’ve run them, we’ve crunched them, added them up and broken them down, and finally, the numbers are in! For those of you with a quantitative bent, enjoy. For those of you looking for something a bit more qualitative, what can I say…. It was a really big road trip and we need some down… Read More By the Numbers: Heart of America Tour, 2018
Each day parked outside the white picket fenced home of my dear friend and former colleague Kelly Brown has brought an interesting encounter with strangers drawn to the Avion…. Day One: the two skate punks who told me they “love it when white people get creative like this.” Yikes. Day Two: the charming musician, straight… Read More Curbside Encounters: The OC
I didn’t get to see last week’s much-ballyhooed super blue moon-lunar eclipse here on the southern Baja coast. From the time I’d gone to bed to the time my alarm went off at 4:30 am, the night sky was eerily bright but deep cloud cover hid the moon and stars from sight. Still, I hauled… Read More Trust. Magic. Healing.