I am being entirely decadent by opening the windows (for fresh air) while simultaneously turning on the heater (for comfort) and lighting candles (for scent and ambiance – if you can find ambiance in a hideously messy bedroom.) It is Friday and my house is trashed from stern to bow. I haven’t 1) brushed my teeth, 2) brushed my hair or 3)put away the breakfast dishes. (Why bother when the dinner dishes are still out?) I have, however, dropped the kids off at school, where once again I was tempted to worship the vice-principal who was standing at the drop-off zone in a floor length yellow mackintosh and a fisherman’s oilcloth hat herding the kids into the library and out … {read more…}

It’s the first day of truly shitty weather and I am having a small but obvious breakdown. Reading Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris non stop probably doesn’t help. You know you are not in a good state of mind when you start thinking: “David Sedaris? I love David Sedaris! He’s the funniest man alive! Such a great writer. Crazy great. How did he get that way? Ah ha! Here it is in chapter Seven! Crystal Meth! Too bad I’m not addicted to crystal meth. Why does Sedaris get all the good addictions?”

Clearly this is not a good mindset.

Sedaris is also an avid smoker–though he’s never achieved his mother’s proficiency for … {read more…}

“Looking back at some of these essays – “essay” in the sense of “attempt” – I feel I might write them in another way if I were writing them today. But then, I’d be unlikely to write them today. Everything we do is embedded in time, and time changes not only us, but our point of view as well. Also, you find out what happened. One year’s prophecy becomes the next year’s certainty, and the year after that, its history. …We’re always looking over our shoulders, wondering why we missed the clues that seem so obvious to us in retrospect.”

Margaret Atwood
Writing with Intent

I have lost many days of writing in my life. Days lost due to illness and the … {read more…}

I work as an artist/writer everyday.

Every. Day.

I have chronic migraines, so some days, like today, my work day is very very short.

In What Her Body Thought, Susan Griffin describes working as a writer with severe chronic fatigue syndrome. She says that often, her work day goal was to read seven pages.

Seven. Pages.

Today, my seven pages looked like donning dark glasses to drive to the nearest art supply store for paper and this:

I’m finally realizing that a real artist/writer need real tools. I know. I’m a little slow.

Here’s to showing up at the page!

I feel like such a grown-up! I just rented my first-ever studio space! It’s just a 15 minute walk away in downtown Fremont (the self-dubbed ‘center of the universe.’) It’s a brand new artist cooperative with a public art installation by the Fremont Arts Council, my pals who brought you the infamous Solstice Parade. I’m number 310 and you can see my pad on a little map here. I can’t wait to move in when it’s done in November!

I’m back from our wonderful trip to NYC and full-to-the-top with energizing artistic vibes. We spent days and days just soaking up the architecture, art, and all manners of ingenious solutions to life in the big city. (Traffic a bitch? Just deliver your Chinese take-out in a bike basket.) We also ingested a goodly dose of authentic bagels, street vendor pretzels, and mama’s cannolli. Some of our experiences were downright religious — I was moved to tears more than once by the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and dear little Eden broke down half way through the Lion King because of the shear beauty and pageantry of it all. As Eden says:

“New York … {read more…}

I have been cooking since 3:30 and now the house smells like mushrooms sautéed in bacon drippings and thick potato soup. Catie’s chocolate covered face confirms that the scent of brownies will soon emerge from the kitchen, and fresh bread from the next door bakery is waiting to be sliced and slathered in butter.

It’s Thursday night.

The living room is joyfully and completely torn up. My artistically arranged magazines and coffee table books are on the floor and two of the sofa cushions are on top of the big padded footstool. A jar of marbles has been serving as money for an imaginary bakery and are now scattered all over the carpet. Catie has just resorted to sobbing because Eden … {read more…}

6.17.06

I am giggling with delight that Paul and the girls will be here soon. I spent the morning in my pajamas, watching The Hunt for Red October and IQ (the only remaining available movies) while I finished the last pages for the LuLu journal. The final page – seafoam origami paper with temporary tattoo mermaids and seashells from magazines – gave me fits. I transferred one mermaid image twice, and then decided to scrap it all together in lieu of the origami background, which was also a transfer but took forever to reveal. I think I rubbed my fingerprints off in places trying to get the ink to release from the paper!

While I rubbed away the paper like … {read more…}

8.16.06

My body is still warm from the bed, which is so soft and heavy with quilts that it holds me like a cupped hand. I have taken in as much sleep as I can absorb. It is nearly nine and the quiet of a solitary house surrounds me – there’s only just the hum of the refrigerator for company.

Before I came here I had begun to notice the jangling noise of city life: voices on the dark sidewalk after we’d already to bed; the Blue Angels searing past the back porch during three days of practice and a weekend of festival maneuvers; the constant low hum of traffic punctuated by the brakes of a metro bus or the impatient … {read more…}

8.12.06

Be Glad, Be Glad, Be Glad

The Jolly Roger is flapping outside my window as I awake. I’ve slept solidly in a bunk bed with a red coverlet and a one-armed sock monkey as my bunkmate. My extra blanket is yellow with bright tassels all around. The curtains are old grass skirts stretched wide across the windows, and though there is an entire bookshelf full of vintage wind-up clocks, I don’t know the time.

We are both ecstatic to be here. Jen is dying to throw herself into the sea, naked and raw, in devotion to a life of art. She scurries about – ebullient, buying a kite, meeting the ranger at the tide pools, making plans to roll down the … {read more…}