Posts Tagged ‘love’

Love Letters to Everyone

20130214-162630.jpg

I have never embraced Valentine’s Day as a red hearts/chocolates/Hallmark kind of day. I used to be quite cynical about it all, being a grumpy punk, but now I appreciate it as an opportunity to honor love in all its forms. Love doesn’t just mean coupledom to me, though, but largesse of spirit and greatness of heart for all your loved ones, so I like to send out little arrows of appreciation and affection to everyone in my circle.

My Parents

I thank whatever divine spirit caused me to be born to them, for their wisdom and trust and love and generosity. They’ve given me the space to be myself, and that means the world to me.

My Sisters

I’m so proud and honored to be part of our tribe. I’m proud of how we all stand together, and how we support one another through thick and thin. They’re the people I can most depend on in my life, and I’m so grateful for that.

My Nieces and Nephews

My little monsters bring so much pure love and energy into my life. I love how much they are a valued part of my life, and I love being witness to their amazing journeys so far as people — seeing them develop and grow as people has been a great joy. I love all their hugs and kisses and snuggling, for getting to hold their hands or push them in swings as they have their little philosophical conversations with me. I’m excited to watch them grow into fine people. They make my heart so much bigger.

My Friends

So many are farflung. Some I talk to often; others maybe once in awhile. But I appreciate all the laughter, support and companionship we’ve shared over the years, all the adventures we’ve had together, all the far-reaching and searching conversations that bring us closer to one another and to ourselves. So many are my bright lights of inspiration, and I’m appreciative of their graceful, courageous examples of making the most out of life.

My Inspirations

Whether they’re friends or creative colleagues or just supernovas in the universe that just blaze and blaze and blaze through the darkness, I’m so grateful for their love and light and brilliance. On a journey with many bumps and pockets of darkness, where you’re often stranded with no map, my inspirations keep me going.

My Co-Workers

I don’t often write about my job, but I will acknowledge here that I work with really good spirits, and that makes everything so much better!

My Ex-Loves

I thank them for making me wiser in the ways of the heart and spirit, and for being some of my best teachers in being a more authentic human being. Without them I wouldn’t be the woman I am, and I wouldn’t have near as much appreciation for the love in my life as I do now.

My Beau

For love and love and love and love. For everything.

You

For reading here, and for so many of your gracious comments and feedback. Despite the omnipresence of social media everywhere, so often writing on the Internet still feels like whispering to yourself in the dark. But when I hear from anyone here — and I get lots of heartfelt missives and searching, provocative questions — I truly feel like we’re not alone in this great big world of ours. So thank you!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Soul + Wisdom on Thursday, February 14th, 2013 | 5 Comments »

Birthday Letters: 36 Things I Learned Last Year

Tomorrow is my birthday, which I feel so many things about. Happy, because I like celebrations and commemorations. And excited, because my birthday means cake and ice cream, and fireworks are coming soon! But also introspective, because I’m older and supposedly wiser, but sometimes I wonder exactly how. And maybe even a little weighed down upon, because, you know: the march of time and the press of mortality. The endgame approaches.

I like the idea of years building upon each other, like pieces of puzzles revealing just a bit more of a bigger picture — and at the end you see what a beautiful portrait you’ve lived with your time on earth. I like themes, lessons, the sense that I’m progressing. Maybe these are illusions wrought by the ability of human beings to occupy different existential time zones at once: to be in the past, present and future, often in the same moment. If these are illusions, then I appreciate how beautiful and comforting they are.

Here I am in another year: sitting on a cloudy day at my favorite coffeeshop, typing away on the small, tiny netbook I favor now over my more robust laptop. I am drinking an iced chai as usual, and I’m feeling hungry, craving fresh fruit and cheese. The coffeeshop, the beverage, the writing and thinking and even the hunger: I do this a lot, and I anticipate I’ll be doing this more in the future, which makes the moment seem not so special.

But there’s the way the light streams through the window, the magic hour making everything seem enchanted, even a weird symphonic version of “Scarsborough Fair” on the stereo. The conversations surrounding me: what books people are reading, a Tarot card consultation, a Bible study group, a family planning a wedding. There’s the smell of orange blossom white tea floating in their air and the sound of quiet love songs played on harps in my ears. There’s something lovely in every moment, and today I like to pretend they are all gifts for me.

These are the things I’ve learned in the past year. One for each year I was. I did a teeny version of this last year; this year felt like such a huge growing and learning and loving kind of year, I felt the urge to get epic.

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Soul + Wisdom on Tuesday, June 26th, 2012 | 10 Comments »

On Telling Stories to Children

I’m not a mother, but children are a big part of my life. I’m a doting auntie and I see my nephews and nieces a lot. They are a big reason why I moved away from NYC and back to my region of origin. I get the distinction of being the “crazy aunt” with them because I lived in a big city and I dress weird and sometimes I drop an unintentional swear-bomb. (I know, I know. I try hard, but sometimes they just slip out! Especially when driving!)

But mostly my role as the eccentric Uncle Jesse equivalent in my own personal “Full House” involves me telling stories to entertain the kiddos. They’re always wanting to play “Story Hour,” and let me tell you — I had some tough instructors in my writing classes, but they were not nearly as tough as this pint-sized set. The minute one of my stories get boring, they simply walk away. Tough crowd!

Kids are so ruthless when it comes to stories. They don’t care so much about evocative language, beautiful atmospherics or penetrating insight. They like action, they like boldly yet simply drawn characters, they like happy, triumphant endings, and a dose of silliness at the right moment doesn’t hurt, either.

The minute something gets slow, or boring, their wide eyes begin to glaze over, they get fidgety, and before you know it, they’ve dissed you for some Barbie coloring book or a wrestling match with their Real Steel action figures, and you’re sitting there like last year’s Disney sitcom princess in rehab.

Funnily enough, I get super-terrified when my nephews and niece demand a story from me. I’ve pitched managers and agents before, but telling stories to the kids in my life makes me even more nervous for some weird reason. Not nervous exactly, but I definitely feel the need to stay alert and responsive in a way that doesn’t exist when it’s just me, my imagination and my fingers flying over the keyboard.

Being the kids’ storyteller makes me remember that stories are, on a basic level, meant to be entertaining: meant to draw people in, meant to enchant and, above all, captivate. You have to weave a spell, and weave it quickly.

There’s kind of a stage fright for oral storytelling, of course, but there’s also the pressure of having to weave a story on the spot. You start to understand how techniques like repetition, stock characters and build-up are so enduring: they help you vamp for time while trying to cook up something new.

But being put on the spot has its unexpected benefits, too: having to invent right then and there makes you un-precious about the act of creation itself. There’s no time or room to be perfectionistic; you simply have to go for it. I’ve definitely had moments when I’ve wondered, in the middle of telling a story, Oh god, what am I going to put in this magic cupboard to keep the kids interested? And then I look at the groceries on the table and think, A haunted bag of potato chips! (They loved that.)

The saving grace of telling stories to kids is that they like to hear the same story over and over again. More than like: they LOVE hearing the same story again and again, repeated ad nauseum. It’s like writing draft after draft, reworking certain crowd-pleasing elements to bring them to the fore and ruthlessly dropping what doesn’t work. It’s live testing in the moment: a quiet hush and wide eyes means it’s working, but the minute my nephew starts punching on his sister, I know that it’s not. (And that’s when I get to yell, “I don’t care who started it, I just know that it needs to STOP!” And then I become slightly terrified that I’m sounding like my mother.)

Anyway: I’ve come to embrace the times when one of my get-along gang demands a story from me. It’s so much fun, and such a good exercise I’m almost convinced writing programs should have an on-going exercise in telling stories to kindergartners. It’s oddly terrifying, but hearing all those kids cheer when you get to that hard-won happy ending feels more viscerally pleasing than anything. Well, almost anything: not quite as good as getting all hugs and kisses from my favorite little ones for taking the time to tell them a tale in the first place.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Creativity + Writing on Thursday, June 21st, 2012 | 4 Comments »

On conundrums, and the smell of spring

I’m sitting at a table near an open window, and there are lilac bushes just starting to bloom outside them, ripening to a darker purple in the sunlight. Everything smells so lovely and fragile, and the wind is murmuring.

*****

The tricky thing is that the areas of life that feel expansive and full of growth and insight for me right now — love and money — are not ones that I’m inclined to write about publicly, for obvious reasons. I really don’t want my love life or the state of my financies to be cached on Google, you know? (This isn’t helped by my day job, which makes me paranoid about how information on the Internet and on phones gets used against people all the time!) Yet I always like to share what I’ve been learning in a space like this. Must figure that puzzle out; as an online-writing veteran of many, many years, I wrestle now with exactly what I want to do with something like this, and how much energy I can put into it without sacrificing my longer, offline projects.

*****

In the meanwhile, I’ll just tell you that I am really in love with the California Star Jasmine fragrance from Pacifica, which I picked up this past weekend. I love the smell of jasmine but hate often how sickly-sweet it can be rendered, but this one smells fresh and green and slightly sharp but sunny. The whole site is 20% off, so if you’re inclined…

*****

Also: I have a piece up at Joan’s Digest, an online feminist film journal. I wrote about a really lovely, fantastic film called Goodbye First Love, directed by Mia Hansen-Love, and I think many of you would love this movie! I wrote specifically about the role of costuming in the film, but the film’s larger themes of self-reliance and vocation in terms of women’s coming-of-age is so beautiful and resonant. See it if you can.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Fashion, Soul + Wisdom on Monday, April 9th, 2012 | No Comments »

Old Zine Writing: A Story About Love, Sex, Punks, College and the 90s

What better way to procrastinate on revising your novel than by revising your old zine writing from eight years ago?

Back in the day I did a zine that ended up being called Continental Drift. (The drawing that’s in my rotating banner is from one of the issues.) My past life as a zinester means a lot to me: I met many friends through zines, read so much brilliant, inspiring writing and thinking and feeling, and it has ended up playing an essential role for me as a writer. I read a lot of my past zine stuff and, these days, it’s like Who wrote this? (In both good and bad ways.)

Most of my zine writing, especially at the beginning, was trying to figure out my thoughts, record my impressions, and just go on and on about music and records and movies and books. But near the end I started getting all arty and writing out fiction sketches — just shards of characters, incidents, moments. This was one place where they all came together to form a story. I found the old file from many years ago, dusted it off and edited it. And now it is called “Distance Covered in Four Songs” and here it is!

If it had tags, it would have: love, sex, college, punks, the 90s, parties, long distance, alternawaifs. That sums it up pretty well.

It is personal and emotional, of course, like a lot of zine writing is, but I feel so distant from it to feel fine about letting it go into the world as its own entity: something that transformed itself beyond my small, narrow experiences into its own thing. Who wrote this? is a very relevant question. I remember the person who wrote this and it feels like a great distance has been traveled and I live on other shores now. But it is a place I remember with great affection, even if I’ll never go there again. Which is what college feels like, often.

Here is the story. According to Figment, it takes about 18 minutes to read. The PDF and ePub have acknowledgments and a note at the end that tells you how much of the story is true:

——–> Read it online at Figment (if you’re a member, give it a heart, I feel so unpopular there, ha ha)
——–> Read it as a PDF
——–> Read it as an ePub document (have no idea if this works, just thought I’d give it a go.)

I actually read my shorter work out loud in the final stages of revision (an old practice from film school), so I have this story as an mp3 as well — just holler if you’re audio-inclined. I spent the summer listening to audio books and I quite enjoyed them, especially when authors or readers had nice voices to listen to.

Of course, everything is an opportunity for a soundtrack. It’s particularly relevant for the story, since music is very much something between the two characters. So here is a mix featuring the four songs in the story, along with five more that remind me of the time period that the story takes place within. There’s Unwound, My Bloody Valentine, Lync, Rye Coalition, and Red House Painters, among others, so it’s good even if you don’t read the story. Life deserves good sound design.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Stories on Friday, February 11th, 2011 | 4 Comments »