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The first time I listened to Einstein on the Beach, I was in the backseat of a car, headed east on the I-10 toward Phoenix, and I didn't know much about what I was hearing. It was nighttime in the desert, but I won't write about the stars. I had the sensation of being carried home by the music, all of those numbers pressed into my back. Pablo was steering. I was high.

Last Saturday night, I saw Einstein on the Beach performed in San Francisco. I'd always thought I'd live in that city by now, but I don't care about moving to San Francisco anymore. I left my seat only once during the four hour and 20 minute performance -- to pee and put on tights (the latter because my legs were cold). I was wearing a onesie, so I had to get fully undressed inside the stall to put on my leggings. It was a complicated process, and my knee-high boots didn't help. The bathroom smelled so strongly of shit, which reinforced my foot's aversion to the small, square tiles below that looked like teeth. I was high.



After the performance, I went to a bar where I ran into one of my oldest friends, a person I hadn't wanted to see. There is nothing bad between us, but sometimes it's difficult to be around people with whom you have so much history. He smoked and spoke between drags: "You look great you look great you look great you look great you look great. Do you have a boyfriend? Is he cute? How is work?" We both seemed uncomfortable, and let our friends do most of the talking. He kept looking at my chest, which I didn't understand because he is gay. I remembered how once, when we were much younger, he scolded me for not wearing a bra. He said I'd pay the price later. I wondered if he was checking.

Last night, I talked to John about our earliest memories. I told him how much I used to enjoy baths in the kitchen sink. I also remembered waking up inside my crib early in the morning, wanting to watch Sesame Street, but I wasn't allowed to leave my crib until my mom gave me permission. I remember standing up, gripping the bars, shaking the crib, shouting, "CAN I GET UP NOW? CAN I GET UP NOW?CAN I GET UP NOW? CAN I GET UP NOW?CAN I GET UP NOW? CAN I GET UP NOW?CAN I GET UP NOW? CAN I GET UP NOW?CAN I GET UP NOW? CAN I GET UP NOW?CAN I GET UP NOW? CAN I GET UP NOW?CAN I GET UP NOW? CAN I GET UP NOW?" until my mom said OK from the other room.

I don't know if I was really precocious, or just too old to be in a crib. Maybe my mom couldn't afford to buy me a bed, and this memory is much later than it seems, which is not unlikely.

dying young

I don't have much to say lately.

I spent most of my 20s and early 30s in relationships that were characterized by uncertainty. My thoughts, writing, and conversation were often preoccupied with the State of My Relationship, i.e. was my partner too controlling? Too needy? Too cynical? Too materialistic? Too spoiled? Too hairy? Were we incompatible on a chemical level because after X years together, I still didn't like the way he smelled?

Was I trapped? Was I ready? Were we boring? Was I suffocating?

With John, I worry that he's going to die. Though he's in no particular danger of dying anytime soon,  it's frightening to imagine my life without him now, so I do my best to make sure that doesn't happen. I cook him lots of vegetables and leave out the yolks when I make eggs. I scold him when I smell smoke in his beard. I buy him yoga Groupons, and though I have not succeeded in getting him to class yet, I have a good feeling about tonight.

I worry that his cat, Henry, doesn't like me. The orange and white tabby shrinks from my touch. He regards me with suspicion, watching me from a careful distance, his doll eyes flashing from his shelf on our bookcase.  Sometimes, I coax him toward me with chunks of canned tuna. If Henry shows me any kindness, I consider it a small victory.

A few evenings a week, John and I ride our bikes together along the L.A. River. He's much faster than I am, so he usually rides ahead, but he'll always double-back when he spots a creeper lurking. We zip past the cruisers rustling in the bushes, the urban fisherman, the enamored teenagers, the graffiti. We brake for opossums and rats. The ride back through Griffith Park has stretches of complete darkness. I follow the beacon of his red flashing bike light until we reach familiar landmarks: the zoo, the golf course, the house we speculate belongs to Moby.

After a ride last week, we stopped for cocktails at a restaurant called Home.

"You look familiar," the manager said when he passed our stools at the bar. I thought he was going to ask if I played roller derby, but instead he asked: "Are you a teacher at GCC?"

Upon entering the restaurant, I had assumed the man was older than me, but studying him then, I realized he was probably years younger.

"Yes," I said.

The most challenging part of our bike ride is the last five minutes -- the climb to the top of a very steep hill. We zigzag our bikes to the summit, then collapse together in our driveway. Huffing and puffing, we stow our bikes in our two-car garage and trudge up the steps toward the porch light. Once inside, we'll watch TV. Or maybe he'll pick up his laptop, and I'll read a book in bed -- something light about the Rwandan genocide -- and I'll look up from the page, noticing my world simultaneously expanding as it contracts.

These Days

Somewhere along the Trail of 100 Giants last weekend, I walked atop a fallen sequoia until I came to the place where its trunk was severed. A few moments earlier, Dustin had leapt across the divide, landing safely on the other side of the tree. I looked down into the carpet of dead leaves that separated the tree's two halves. In the distance, I heard my friends alternately calling "Jump!" and "Don't jump!" I felt unsafe, and before I could ask, John was at my side, his arms outstretched, offering to help me down from the tree. I let him place his hands on my hips as I dismounted.

Adriana followed, and when she came to the split, she jumped high and then plummeted, disappearing behind the great trunk, onto the forest floor. Stupidly, I asked our friends, "Is she OK?" From our vantage point, no one could see where or how she'd landed. "I don't know," said Liam, and he went running in her direction. Before he could make it, we heard her disembodied voice call out, defeated, "I'm fine."

When I was a kid, I was always mistaken for much younger. Skinny and comically short, I was in the front row for every class photo and never allowed to ride the rides at amusement parks with my friends. I'd stare up at the wooden clown with his extended arm, the word bubble blown from his lips announcing, "You must be this tall to ride," and scowl. When my stepmother tried to register me for summer camp, the counselor asked, "What are you -- 8, 9, 10?" I was 12 -- a few months from 13 -- and livid. Adults tried to reassure me, "Don't worry -- you'll appreciate it when you get older," but I couldn't imagine such a time.

I remember being 21 and trying to get into a club in Seattle. The bouncer denied me entrance, emphatic that my ID was phony. It wasn't.

This sort of thing didn't happen so much once I hit my nebulous mid- to late-20s, but lately I've noticed an uptick. Having a chest x-ray last week for a cough I can't seem to shake, the technician did a double take at the sight of my chart. "Thirty-three?" he said. "I thought you were 23."

"Thanks."

"I'm not kidding," he said, looking puzzled.

On the phone with my mother recently, she inquired about John's age.

"He's 34, about to turn 35."

"He ain't no kid," she pronounced.

"Mom," I had to remind her, "I'm 33."

I don't think I look so young, and if you study me, there are signs. Like the inside of a tree trunk, the rings around my neck tell a story.

Walking all over New York City last month in inappropriate footwear gave me a case of tendinitis I've been trying to ignore (tendinitis: common affliction of the older athlete).  Years of derby conditioned me to defy pain, but I can no longer pretend that I'm not limping in the aftermath of the thrice-weekly runs through my neighborhood, past all the blooming flowers I can't name because I've never bothered to find out what they're called.

After years of clinging to some romantic need for the wind in my hair, I have finally acquiesced and started wearing a bicycle helmet.

Ed's father died last month, his mother the previous year.

"I don't know if you heard," he texted me, "but I'm an orphan."

I had heard -- news of one's exes has its way of getting back to you -- but I hadn't been in touch. A phone call seemed intrusive, but a text too impersonal. I thought of sending a card, but I no longer knew his address, and to ask for it would have revealed my intent. The obvious choice, email, didn't occur to me until too late. So I did nothing and felt bad about it, contemplating our summers in Maine with his family and the funny bond between exes.

Studying the wedding photos on the blog of another ex, Tony, I was struck by the conspicuous absence of his father.

Ed's relationship with his parents bewildered me when we were a couple. He had a barely restrained hostility toward them for which I could never determine the root. His home was unbroken, they supported him through college and grad school and into his first years of screenwriting until he saw some success. They weren't conservative. What was the problem? I'd often wonder.

In his grief, or perhaps the years following our breakup, the old anger must have evaporated because his texts had contained an unexpected sense of loss.

"I just want my dad back," he wrote.

It surprised me even though we all should know better.

sweating the small stuff

Some things we like to talk about that no one wants to hear:

1) Dreams (the kind that happen while you sleep, i.e. "I had the craziest dream last night. There was this dog on a skateboard who was actually my dad. I'm pretty sure he was wearing a monocle and there was a parrot on his shoulder...")

2) Happy romantic relationships

3) Nebulous health problems (to be clear: "so I have this weird rash on my earlobe that only flares up when the temperature is between 69-72 degrees and the moon is waning" vs. "I have cancer").

Since I rarely remember my dreams, numbers two and three are the pertinent ones here, which are part of the reason things have been so quiet at the Hollywood Librarian. The boring truth is that I don't have anything interesting to say.

On two separate occasions last Sunday, I started talking about the thing I know better than to talk about with casual acquaintances: my throat. Both times, it was unsolicited. As the words dropped from my sickly maw, the voice in my head begged me to shut the fuck up, and eventually my mouth took the hint. But it's hard not to talk about the one thing you spend too much time thinking about.

Now it's your turn, dear reader. So I have this problem with my throat....

I first noticed it back in November. At that time, it was a small lesion or patch, which would occasionally feel irritated. Since I've been back from Costa Rica, other lesions have appeared, mostly on my soft palate. These come and go. I've also developed what looks like a throat rash -- tiny red bumps -- on my soft palate and uvula, but also occasionally on the the roof of my mouth. Sometimes small clear blisters form. I experience cycles of healing and flare-ups though the rash is constant. Sometimes it hurts and sometimes it doesn't, but it's always there. In the months I've been living with this, I haven't been able to pinpoint a trigger, and it's driving me batty.

One ENT told me that it's probably a virus and it will probably go away eventually.

"Probably?"

"I see these things sometimes. It should run its course."

"How long will that take?"

"Months?" he said with a shrug.

It's already been months, and it doesn't seem to be improving. Yesterday, wanting a second opinion, I saw another ENT, who told me to stop using Listerine. He also offered this advice:

"How often do you look into your mouth?

"Daily."

"Why don't we cut that back to twice a month?"

I've spent a lot of my time Googling symptoms rather than reading or writing or doing anything productive or creative. It's not constructive, and I realize that stress can exacerbate a condition like this. There are far worse afflictions than a chronic sore throat, but I'm hung up on the idea that this is my body's way of telling me something isn't right here, and maybe it's linked to some of my other malfunctions, and why can't a doctor connect the dots already?

Instead of reading books at night, I've spent too much time in front of the bathroom mirror, examining my throat with my repurposed booklight. It illuminates the constellations of tiny bumps and blisters. I track their movements, searching for signs and symbols, trying to divine some meaning from it all. And I feel fortunate that I get to curl up next to someone who listens to all the daily developments in my throat and pretends, admirably, not to be bored.

better than feathers

no habla espanol

I ran away to Costa Rica to avoid Christmas, but that’s not really why I went to Costa Rica. I went to learn Spanish, but we all know you can’t learn Spanish in two weeks -- and certainly not in a town like Montezuma where everyone speaks English, and its service professionals have little patience for a gringa-ass like mine practicing its Spanish in restaurants where a sandwich costs $12, and yes, they take American dollars. What I really wanted to do was read and write for two weeks in front of the ocean, uninterrupted, which is what I did (except for those four hours of Spanish every day and the hour and a half of yoga every night, and all of the fire-dancing I was required to watch as a temporary denizen of this town ruled by the Poi People, who -- around 9 p.m. each night -- crawl from the ocean and into the streets with their flame-retardant, underworldy elfin garb, fire sticks a-twirling).

What I really wanted was time to figure some things out.

I packed my seriously heavy copy of Swann's Way and downloaded John Jeremiah Sullivan's Pulphead to my Kindle (dear everyone: go read Pulphead now). I didn’t crack the Proust, but was instead pulled toward a battered copy of the Rings of Saturn, found in my one-bookstore-town’s one bookstore. Too much multi-tasking meant I didn't get through either, but Sebald and Sullivan made excellent traveling companions on a trip about figuring stuff out.

I wrote every day until my hand cramped and could tell you 30 stories and give you a few epiphanies. Maybe I’ll get around to putting some of them here, but I'll probably save most of it.

The thing I struggle most with in writing, and why I can’t commit myself to getting serious about it, is that I’m a slave to the first person. I write best about myself, or with myself as narrator, and I’m kind of ashamed that fiction is so hard for me. It’s like I’m constantly punching myself in the head, telling myself to get over myself already. It feels self-important -- what makes my POV so interesting anyway?

But here are a couple of things I figured out: John Jeremiah Sullivan is a great first-person essayist and my roommate was a total weirdo. She was so strange that I devoted pages of my journal to her without realizing I was doing it. And what a great thing that was for me: the privilege that time affords, the ability to pay attention, to notice, to get out of my own head a bit.

"I feel so alive here," was the roommate's constant refrain. She said it at least once a day, half to me, half to herself. And then she would sigh. She sighed a lot: tiny Chinese-American sighs, the repression escaping in bursts through her pretty mouth.

The roommate was dreading her return to the states, and as the date approached, her affirmations of life were followed by the occasional, "I don't want to go back."

I, on the other hand, felt ready. Most of my vacations are followed by a week of crippling depression -- the Hollywood sign becoming a shadowy, ominous thing hanging over my head -- but I had a feeling this time would be different. It was. The trip strengthened my resolve to read more, write more, work on my Spanish, and be more present. I was feeling good about this, motivated.

Apart from being arguably present, I haven't done much of these things since my return.

For example: I want to revise the essay I wrote before I left, and try to submit it somewhere. The problem is that it's so sad, and I'm not. Every time I look at the thing, it's such a buzzkill that I put it back into the metaphorical drawer. Unfortunately (for my productivity), I met someone before I left for Costa Rica, and I’ve been very distracted since my return. He made me black-eyed peas and collard greens on New Year's Day, and we haven't spent much time apart since.

And that's all I'm going to say about that because reading about another person’s new-relationship-euphoria is boring.

Instead, I will tell you about my roommate, who, on our last night in Montezuma, danced for the first time on the back lawn of the town's only bar. The music was terrible, a genre I dubbed "Thump-Thump Latin Grind Fuck," and it creeped from the bar's dance floor onto the grass, infecting our bare feet. We danced in a circle -- me and my far-flung classmates, some of whom I'd grown to love in those two weeks. Back home in my insular Holly-world, I can't imagine our paths ever crossing -- and I'm not talking about the geographical distance that separates us. The bar's DJ insisted on reminding us where we were every minute or so, cutting through the music to shout the Spanish equivalent of "Give it up, Montezumaaaaaaa!"

The tropical mist swirled around our ankles like cauldron smoke while the mosquitoes were held at bay by a force field of Deet, our toxic Costa Rican perfume. The roommate's dancing was a thing to behold: a jerking marionette at war with her puppeteer. Her arms flailing, her head thrown back, she faced the moon defiantly, but with closed eyes. I watched and wondered what she was thinking.

XMAS SMD

One of my favorite holiday traditions has become my friends' JJ and Marisol's annual caroling party. Sunday night was the second year I participated, and it was magical. This year's theme was Sock Puppets. Our merry crew took to the streets of Angelino Heights, which teems with beautiful Victorian homes. Our sock-covered hands belted out holiday classics like "Frosty the Snowman" and "Come on Feel the Noise," accompanied by an acoustic guitar. We were invited into a few homes and rewarded with cookies (and in one case, a fistful of joints).

My sock puppet was hella hungover on Monday

I'm not a scrooge. I can get behind secular holiday traditions -- spending time with loved ones, preparing/eating rich food, the spirit of generosity, etc. What I'm not down with is the rampant consumerism, which punches me in the gut a little harder each year. How many Starbucks gift cards, scented candles, ugly scarves and functionless thingamabobs does a person need? This year, I'm bowing out. I'm not buying a single gift, and those who might be inclined to buy me something are under instructions not to bother.

What I'm also not down with is another Phoenix Christmas. I'd rather visit my mom under different circumstances. It's just she and my brother and we don't have any traditions to speak of. She usually works on Christmas anyway. So, a few months ago, I made an executive decision to do what I wanted to with my holiday off-time. I'm spending 12 days in Costa Rica, learning Spanish and practicing yoga. Adios, muchachos.

Mom wasn't thrilled about my holiday travel plans, but to compensate, I offered to buy her the French Bulldog she's been dreaming about for months. Apparently, this dog is a suitable stand-in for me. She lit up as soon as I made the offer, and Costa Rica hasn't been mentioned since. Win-win.

Next year, I'm dreaming of a Thai Christmas. I wonder what animal I will have to sacrifice for that one.

on writing

I haven't been writing here lately because I'm in the throes of a personal essay-writing class. It's taught by a prolific essayist -- a woman who earns her living writing these things, freelance, publishing her work in glossy mags and newspapers on a regular basis. The objective of the class is to refine your craft, learn some tricks of the trade and get your work published -- and many of her previous students have succeeded in this. The instructor knows the industry well and offers great insight (sometimes shockingly) into her students' work. At times, the class feels more like a group therapy session than a writing workshop, and while that's a little weird for me, it can get interesting. There are ten people in the class, and based on the early drafts I've read, I'd estimate 2/3 are writing publishable material. Yes, I realize that leaves us with a fraction of a person, but it's still pretty good.

In taking this class, I've learned that I don't have much love for the personal essay as a genre (I didn't really know what I was signing up for when I registered). Most personal essay writing is somewhat glib for my taste -- easy to swallow life-lessons, and it's not really my bag.

I wasn't taking the class to get my work published. My B.A. is in journalism and I worked as a writer for a few years after college, absolutely hating it, which is why I wound up a librarian. I adore the written word, but find it painful to write on command in a voice that is not always my own about things that do not move me. So instead, I chose to surround myself with the words of others.

But I still love writing. Over the years, it's become therapeutic for me. Since I mostly write about myself these days, it affords me a different kind of control over my life. I'm able to craft a narrative, assign symbols, and make connections among things that are not necessarily related so I can make some sense of them. It's comforting. I journal frequently and write here sometimes, and maybe this sounds silly, but it's a way to give my world some meaning.

I took this class because I wanted to become more disciplined about my writing, and maybe get some ideas going with an eye toward writing something long-form in the future. Maybe. I was testing the waters. But I was embarrassed by the essay draft I brought to class Tuesday night. For lack of a more apt metaphor, I thought it was a piece of shit.

In the course of writing the essay, I decided I was a fool for taking this class. I was struggling with the personal essay formula my instructor had prescribed. There was a format, and I didn't know how to make my writing comply. Reading the first round of my classmates' drafts the previous week, I was surprised by the mostly consistent tone of their writing: breezy and conversational, and in some cases, quite witty. When done well, it's a style of writing I often admire in others because it seems so effortless.

By comparison, my own writing feels heavy and twisted, complicated and literary. I mean this in the worst possible way. Just because something is literary doesn't mean it's any good. And that's how I felt about the essay I brought to class Tuesday night: it was the work of someone who couldn't master the personal essay trying to disguise it with the affected voice of literary fiction. I didn't do it on purpose, but it's the only way I know how to write about anything personal -- with the distance my narrative voice affords. And I hated the parts of the essay where I had to talk explicitly about the way I felt -- what the instructor calls "your ugly paragraph(s)." I wasn't used to writing this way. I shy away from spelling anything out for a reader, and prefer to communicate my feelings through scene and metaphor.

I tried to put a positive spin on it. The class hadn't been a waste of my time. I'd learned a valuable lesson from this experience: I don't want to write for other people. I don't want to be published. Maybe it was time to put my pen away. And what was I doing with this stupid, sporadically updated blog anyway? It's embarrassing and I should probably just delete it. Keep this stuff in my journal.

You can probably guess where this is going, so I won't detail the overwhelmingly positive feedback my essay received, and my instructor's insistence that I publish it. As my classmates handed copies of my draft back to me, I kept seeing the same comment scrawled across the top: "write a memoir." "memoir material." "have you thought about writing a memoir?"

The essay I wrote is about buying my mother a dog, but of course, that's not what it's really about. I haven't decided if I want to submit it anywhere because I don't know how representative it is of my style as a writer. I made a lot of compromises.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this. Maybe this is a blog post about when I started to take myself more seriously as a writer. Or maybe it's a more general commentary about how unforgiving and critical of myself I can be, and how maybe I should lighten up. But I'm not sure that it's either of those things. I've come to no conclusions, which is probably why I'll never be a good personal essayist.

going home again

The T.V. in my mother's new condo is always on -- even when there is no one home to watch it. A wall-mounted flat screen, I imagine the high-definition faces exist to greet her when she walks through the door after another 16-hour shift. When I arrived home on a recent Friday night -- my mother still at work, my brother asleep -- I was welcomed by The Long Island Medium, warm and glowing.

"I fell off the bed last week," my mother tells me the next day over lunch. It happened like this: home from another long day/night at the nursing home, she sits on her bed. Reading one moment, the next she is on her back, a sea of white wall-to-wall carpeting keeping her afloat. "I must've fallen asleep sitting up. I could've cracked my head on the nightstand. I was lucky."

She told my brother the same story, and a few days later, a pillow appeared on the floor near her bed.

"Sounds like he's worried about you," I said.

"He does what he can."

What he can do isn't much these days. Out of rehab and newly fired from another job, he mostly hangs around the condo sleeping or smoking or watching T.V., not paying rent, intermittently taking drugs and then trying to quit them. He says he's moving to Vegas next week. Somehow, he's driving an Infiniti.

I didn't want to be in Phoenix, but a sense of duty had pulled me east. The older I get, the more inexplicable it seems that this is my family. My mother: naked, gaunt, her body looking, somehow, like it's trying to swallow itself. With every visit, she appears smaller. Is this the same woman who used to read "Are You My Mother?" to a four-year-old me every night before bed? Who taught me to roller skate? Who used to drag me down the hallway, screaming, by my ponytail? She is disintegrating, and I never feel more alone in the world than when she looks at me, her eyes brimming with raw pride and affection. We speak different languages. This is the person who loves me more than anything, but I do not trust her.

We went shopping together, a play at being functional. I don't think we'd shopped together since I was a kid. Then, she used to steal things in front of me, but she doesn't do that anymore -- at least not that I've noticed. We went to only one store, Pier 1 Imports, my maiden voyage to this strip mall port. Walking through the automatic glass doors, my nose was assaulted by scented candles, a cloying stink cloud permeating the air. Everything here was glittering, ornate, overwrought, often without function. For Halloween, displays of animatronic witches cackled at my mother, and she smiled in return, her new bridge twinkling among decaying teeth. How many animatronic Santas, snowmen and bunnies had she seen before this one? But there she was, enchanted, as if seeing it for the first time, a child.

"Isn't this one neat?" She kept thrusting bejeweled picture frames in my face, soliciting my opinion. I squinted, repeating the same phrase I'd uttered a thousand times already. "It's not really my taste."

When it came time to pay, Mom couldn't find her Pier 1 credit card. With a line of people behind her, she poured the contents of her purse onto the counter, scavenging among the envelopes and rubber bands and prescription bottles. With a tight smile, the cashier offered to look up her credit card information.

"Can I verify your address?" she asked.

"I don't know it," Mom said, frustrated. "I just moved."

It had been three months.

Imaginary Postcards (pt. 2)

(continued from here)

1.

Photo by Ji

Dear Dicky,

Today I learned that Adriana and Ji don't like Morrissey. WTF?

2.

Photo by Adriana

Dear Dicky,

I lost the keys to our rental car somewhere inside a Long's Drugstore today, and 2.5 hours of vacation were lost in consequence. We scanned each aisle countless times, ransacked the trash bins, combed the parking lot, but these keys had something to prove. The Long's staff rallied to help us, interrupting their workday to join the hunt, and I was touched by their genuine concern.

I felt like a stereotype -- another absent-minded woman losing her keys -- and inside, I was beating myself up for it. Repeatedly, I apologized to Ji and Adriana for my fuck-up, but they responded only with reassurances. "Yes, we're stuck at a drugstore," Ji said, "but it's a drugstore in Maui and it doesn't get much better than this." I thought of boyfriends from vacations past, and wondered if they would've been so kind.

We ate fish from a cart in the parking lot and weighed our options. I was ready to call a locksmith (a $300 pricetag for new key), when an employee ran from the store, a fistful of silver flashing. The keys had been hiding among the water socks. I went back inside and thanked every employee personally. To myself, I vowed to be a better person.

Later, we took the long way to Waimoku Falls and the Seven Sacred Pools -- the West Maui Highway. The landscape here is alien, a little like land coming back to life in the decades following a wildfire. I piloted our car through the winding dirt roads, stopping occasionally to inspect the herds of grazing Maui cows, who seemed somehow more relaxed and friendly than mainland cows. "Moohalo!" we'd shout to them. The cows would only masticate and stare in response, but we could see the pineapples twinkling in their eyes. And all along this narrow road, the bluest ocean was always to our right, a constant companion crashing against the lava rocks.

"What planet is this?" one of us asked.

If you filmed landscapes like this, I think I'd enjoy your work more.

3.

Dear Crystal,

I ate the best meal of my life tonight -- our last in Maui -- at Mama's Fish House. Granted, we got incredibly stoned in the car beforehand, which proved a little embarrassing since the parking lot was valet-only. I had to relinquish our smoke-filled vehicle to an attendant who slid behind the wheel without making eye contact. Heightened senses or no, I still think it would've been the best meal ever. I'm pretty sure.

We ordered three appetizers, three entrees and three desserts. I think the waitress was a little afraid of us -- three women who ate with such abandon and gusto. Several dishes were served in coconut shells, and Adriana asked for a spoon so she could scrape out the flesh. At the meal's end, these were our only leftovers -- our plates were bare -- and so we took the coconut shavings home with us in a box. The bill was over $300 before tip, which I'm sure you find horrifying, but it was worth it.

On the ride back to our vacation rental, we listened to our favorite Maui old school radio station, and sang along to Exposé's "The Point of no Return." On the eucalyptus-lined road to Hai'ku, we stopped the car short because so many frogs were hopping into the road. Illuminated by our headlights, a single frog waited, looking up at the three of us expectantly.

"Go touch it, Ji!" Adriana squealed. Ji exited the car and walked toward the frog. As she got within striking distance, she took a step backward, paused, and then moved closer again. She reached out her hand, but then snatched it away, stepping backward. This happened several times before she turned toward us and said, "I can't! I'm scared."

"I think I can handle this," I said, rising from the passenger seat. I crouched next to the frog and stared him down, the headlights cutting through the fog around us, creating a spotlight. I was surprised by the frog's muscularity -- the little guy was ripped. Our eyes were locked as I reached out and touched his clammy back, shocked that he didn't move as my fingers grazed his skin. I turned and looked up at Adriana, still behind the steering wheel, in awe.

"Kiss him!" she shouted.

I turned back to the frog and lowered myself into plank position. As I moved my face toward him, he leapt away. Instinctively, I assumed a frog position and hopped after him. I chased him to the edge of the eucalyptus grove, but I wasn't quick enough -- he'd disappeared into the foggy woods.

I stood, balled my fists and turned my face toward the low-hanging Maui moon, howling, "Unrequited love!"

I know you haven't been too interested in traveling to Hawaii, but I think you'd like it here. So many things remind me of you.

4.

Photo by Adriana

Dear Shannon,

I brought three books to Maui (two on my Kindle). This does not include my copy of Maui Revealed, which is the only one I've cracked for six days on this island. I'm carrying my journal too, but my pen only appears to sign checks. Is this living in the moment? I'm writing these postcards now, here on my blog, because stopping to write about anything that happened as it was happening felt impossible. I did buy some postcards on my last day in Maui, which I scrawled hastily on the first leg of my flight, and then mailed when I changed planes in Honolulu. I can't remember anything I wrote.

I hope you haven't found any more poop in your library. I'm still trying to figure out what I should do for Thanksgiving. It's not the same without you.

Imaginary Postcards (pt. 1)

Our plane is circling above the island, making our final descent into Kahului, but through the cabin windows, there isn't much to see. Clouds. The darkening sky. Adriana has the window seat and Ji is on the aisle. It seems I have made a sacrifice by volunteering for the middle, but I only wanted a guaranteed sweet spot for the return trip. I am planning for the end before anything has begun. A few moments earlier, Adriana was singing "Knocking on Heaven's Door." We have not yet seen the island, but as we descend, Adriana says, "I want to get pregnant here."

1.

Second waterfall. We hid our cameras in the forest after this. Photo by Ji.

Dear Lei,

Today we went chasing waterfalls and Adriana surprised me. The guidebook described the hike to the Four Falls of Na'ili'ili-Haele as an "adventure" -- a category that is distinct from an "activity." On the trail to the first waterfall, through the bamboo forest and across the wooden plank that served as a bridge, families were turning around. "The waterfalls here aren't any good," a mother tried to reassure her young son who was too tiny for the rock-climbing.

The first waterfall was small, but after scaling the slippery rocks, we were rewarded with the gorgeous second waterfall. Before I could take in my surroundings, Adriana jumped into the pool. She glided through the water, a bespectacled mermaid home to breed.

The pool, the falls, the pebble shore, the birds chirping in the bamboo forest: it was enough for me. More rock-climbing and a trip up a rickety rope ladder attached to a 12-ft rock face would be required to reach the third waterfall. I was ready to call it a day here (guidebook: "This is as far as most people will go"), but Adriana was already out of the water and climbing. "If gyms were this spectacular, I'd be so fit." I remembered the time I brought her once, years ago, to my Burn & Firm class at the Hollywood YMCA. Twenty minutes in, she was balled up in a corner of the gymnasium, head between her legs, hyperventilating under the fluorescent lights. Who was this creature now, climbing waterfalls barefoot in a hot pink bikini, as I slipped around in my waterlogged tennis shoes? Reluctantly, I followed her up the side of the rock.

The hike was worth it. At the top of the third waterfall -- more breathtaking than the previous two -- we took turns jumping into the pool 30 feet below. We hadn't packed any food, but it didn't matter. As we splashed around, perfectly ripe passion fruit floated toward us. We'd suck out the oozy flesh and watch the discarded rinds drift away with the current.

"I'm done," said Adriana as she floated in the pool. "If this vacation ended now, I would be completely satisfied." It was only Day 2.

So . . . have you killed my plants yet?

2.

Photo by Adriana

Dear Mom,

I am in Maui. I don't think I told you I was going. Sometimes I feel guilty when I tell you about my travel plans because you've never been anywhere, and I know it's not for lack of interest. When I visit anyplace other than Phoenix, I know I am making a choice. I wonder if that occurs to you too -- even though I don't think you've ever said anything to make me feel bad about it.

We stopped for barbecue today at a shack on the side of the Hana Highway. I love driving here and it makes me think of my other favorite drives -- the Pacific Coast Highway through central California and Australia's Great Ocean Road. Not that Hana looks anything like those places -- it's just that same feeling of otherworldliness. There is a waterfall every few miles. The guidebook described a condition that is common among vacationers: beauty fatigue. It hasn't happened to me yet.

The barbecue stand was out of mahi-mahi. We didn't think we'd make it to Hana before sunset and the guidebook warned that our food options were limited. Jesse, the islander behind the grill holding a Heineken says, "Chicken or Pork?" After explaining that I don't usually eat meat, he says, "What? You come all the way to Maui and you not gonna try the pork?" He has a point. "Pork," I say. He piles my plate high with the stuff and I carry it to the long wooden picnic table.

Did you cook pork when I was a kid? Because I don't remember it ever tasting this way -- I don't think it would've been possible. I tell myself that it's Hawaii falling apart in my mouth and it's paradise. With some help from Ji and Adriana, my plate is cleaned.

How is James doing?

3.

Photo by Adriana

Dear Chris,

Today my camera fell off a cliff.

Yesterday, we met a guy working a roadside barbecue stand who offered to show us around Hana. When we asked how much it would cost, he said, "Spend the day with me and at the end, you decide what it's worth." He told us his Hawaiian name at least three times, but I can't remember it. He also goes by Jesse, so that's what we call him.

The first place he took us was the Blue Pool, which is on private property, but Jesse's somehow related to the owners, so it was OK. In fact, I've noticed that he addresses most everyone we meet as "brother" or "cousin." The water in the Blue Pool is spring-fed. We took turns drinking from it and then letting the water pour over our heads, the force of it making our skulls vibrate. "This is your baptism," Jesse said.

He drove our rental car through the winding roads of Hana with a Heineken between his legs. I don't know why this seemed acceptable, but it was. Maybe because my father always drove with a beer between his legs? Maybe because the sky was full of rainbows? We made stops for waterfalls, beaches, and to gather food: fruit, banana bread, avocado, and once, a salad (which involved Jesse hacking away at the brush along the side of the road). We listened to the Knife ("This sounds like music for people on Ecstasy") and Bo Diddley, which Jesse liked better, though he kept singing over the vocals with impromptu island songs.

He wanted to cook us fish for dinner, which meant fish would need to be caught. This meant scaling the side of a cliff, the dirt crumbling beneath our feet as we took tentative steps, clinging to whatever protuberances we could grip in the wall of rock. We eventually settled into a perch and watched Jesse stand in a tree for a half-hour, surveying the surf below, scanning the tide pools for the telltale silvery glint. We watched the Heineken bottle slip from his hands and crash a few hundred feet below. And then he was off, armed with a backpack and a net, bounding down the side of the cliff like a kid playing hopscotch.

We watched the water and waited. Sometimes Jesse was visible among the rocks, but mostly he'd disappear for long stretches of time. Silently, we considered what we'd do if he didn't come back -- how would we get out of this place without his guidance? -- but we kept our fears to ourselves. When the silver camera slipped from my hands and fell soundlessly below, we all thought that it could have been any of us. When I moved to look over the cliff for any sign of it -- maybe it got caught on a rock, I thought -- Adriana said, "No. Don't. Stop."

Nearly an hour passed before Jesse returned to us, his blue backpack heavy with fish. "Sorry that took so long," he said. "You hungry?" We went back to a home that wasn't his -- another cousin? -- in a neighborhood that felt a little like South L.A., but with a better view, and watched him fry the fish whole. We ate fish eyes and drank beer on a stranger's porch as the sun set over Hana. Stuffed, we left Jesse with a fistful of cash.

How is the pizza in New Haven?

(to be continued)

moohalo

I went to Maui for a week with Ji and Adriana. We saw a lot of these:

According to the Shepherd of Hana, aka Uncle Jesse, rainbows are NBD. "I see them every day. What's really cool are moonbows. You can put your hand through them."

Also, we did a lot of this:

And then I came home to this guy:


Roaches are a rare thing in my apartment. Clearly, he was straggler from Lei's week of hard-partying in my absence.

More later...

detritus

A couple of months ago, Chris bought a truck. Last weekend, he crammed its shell full of camping gear, sparing only enough room for Nico and a few succulents. Joel offered himself as co-pilot for the nearly 3,000-mile drive east, where C will spend the next two years at grad school.

A few things I inherited:

Beer: 1 can of La Playa, 1 bottle of San Miguel, 1 bottle of Red Stripe

1 bottle of Jagermeister

1 bottle of Pamplemousse Rose Perrier

Assorted frozen foods including (but not limited to): cheese blintzes, chocolate soy ice cream sandwiches, TJs vegetable gyoza potstickers, eggplant & zucchini, a bag of frozen corn, mini croissants

1 ice pack

1 Bikini Kill cassette tape

1 Crass cassette tape (a gift for Dicky)

1 broom
1 dust pan
1 roll of bubble wrap

Assorted cleaning products
1 bottle of hydrogen peroxide
1 bottle of isopropyl rubbing alcohol
6 light bulbs (of varying shapes, sizes and wattage)

a pile of recycling (which remains near my front door, awaiting transfer to its temporary resting place in the blue bins outside my apartment)

houseplants: 1 mother-in-law's tongue, 1 Euphorbia Obesa, 1 purple shamrock (grown from a cutting I'd given Chris as a housewarming gift when he moved back to L.A.).
1 Echo Park Time Travel Mart mug

countless strands of dog hair

Chris spent his last night in L.A. at my apartment, and when I woke Sunday morning, he'd already picked up Joel. I could hear them bounding up and down the stairs, loading up the truck. I didn't want to watch, so I hid in my room for a while, and when I sensed they were nearing the end, I made my way downstairs, into the unwelcome sunlight. The truck was parked in front of my building and they were making the final adjustments. My neighbor -- a middle-aged black woman to whom I had never said more than "Hello" -- was taking photographs, trailing Chris and Joel, their arms laden with boxes and crates, like she was some kind of moving day paparazzi.

She turned to me.

"I'll get you the pictures later. You'll want to remember this day."

Which is funny because I've already forgotten the moment his truck pulled away.

kitchen drive

Dicky's work challenges me. In last year, much of it has become performance-based, which is to say that his participation (e.g. projecting slides, playing recorded sound, etc.) has become part of the work. He'll usually leave some elements to chance, rendering each performance unique.

Generally, these performances are long. If he's projecting film, it's not edited. The camera is handheld and sometimes it's out of focus. If he's projecting slides, there are a lot of them, projected for varying durations. The images are often scenes that I find unpleasant: Phoenecian landscapes, the meeting of desert and concrete. If a score accompanies, it is tape-recorded and tinny, projected from a single speaker cassette player, and it often sounds like noise: random sounds, snippets of conversation, rustling, breathing, etc.

Everything about it is defiantly analog. It's raw and without technical sophistication. It tests my patience, and that's part of the point, but it doesn't make the experience any less uncomfortable.

A recent six-hour performance featured the re-creation of a roadtrip in someone's kitchen on a Monday afternoon. I wasn't there. Dicky sat at the kitchen table, projecting slides, drinking coffee, playing his score, making conversation with those who had come to watch and who had become, unwittingly, his roadtrip companions. Some of the images were from trips we'd taken together -- of note, our annual holiday ride to Phoenix, on the I-10 across the most bleak stretches of the Sonoran Desert. I hate that six-hour drive, but I appreciate his rendition of it. Particularly in the form of a six-minute clip where INXS kicks in toward the end.

two days

July 3:

The yellow dress was a mistake, I think. Biking from Hollywood to downtown on the hottest day of summer so far, it showed every streak of perspiration. When we stopped for iced coffee, I asked Chris if I looked dewy or sweat-soaked.

"A little bit of both?"

He was being kind. We sat under an umbrella and wiped the sweat from our brows with paper napkins.

The dress was a parasail, catching the wind and billowing around me as I rode toward the museum. I tried to contain the skirt with the grip of my legs, but I wasn't always successful, the white of my thighs flashing at oncoming traffic.

At MOCA, I heard my recorded voice come through a single speaker, childish, played on a cassette tape as Dicky projected the accompanying slides onto a screen. We only caught the tail-end of his performance, and I'd walked into the room just in time to hear myself. The images and recording were from Big Family Day a month prior. I remembered following him around the museum that day, frustrated because he seemed to be running away from me, camera and tape recorder in hand.

"What are you doing?" I'd asked.

"Creating documents."

His response had annoyed me because it seemed like ambiguous art-speak, but now it struck me as quite literal.

On this day, the museum was filled with experimental music. In the courtyard, Liam was making noise by touching dry ice to triangles.

Hours later, I was on a rooftop on the edge of downtown, drinking Modelo and Jim Beam. The heat and the alcohol were bringing out the best and the worst in all of us. We told stories from our childhoods and some of us became children. There was crying and hair-pulling. A girl punched a boy. Someone grabbed my head and tried to kiss me as I stood very still, lips clenched, as he pressed his face against mine. When he tried a second time, I pushed him away, saying "NO."

On the plant-covered rooftop, mosquitoes buzzed beneath the yellow dress, sucking on my thighs. Above us, fireworks burst and faded.

July 4:

I love a good fireworks show, and I can't remember the last 4th of July I didn't watch one, but when Dicky suggested an 8 p.m. showing of Tree of Life, it seemed like the right idea.

The film was flawed, but when it worked, it was wonderful, evoking certain feelings from childhood I'd forgotten. It also made me deeply sad to confront the reality of never again experiencing things for the first time.

I'm not planning to have children. As I've grown older, I have a hard time identifying with kids despite willfully living much of my life like one. The film made me recall what it actually felt like to be a child -- not just pretending at it. The truth is that kids intimidate me, and I wonder if it's because I envy them.

After the movie, Dicky and I wandered aimlessly around Hollywood, discussing the film and how it made us feel -- in the language we lacked as children. A single white firework went off above our heads, and I was reminded of a 4th of July years ago. It may have been 2004, and from the roof of the San Francisco Art Institute, we watched fireworks explode over the bay, the bridge. The fog rendered their shapes invisible, so they merely lit up the clouds -- red, then green, then blue -- a Technicolor storm.

On the Walk of Fame, a black woman sat in a plastic chair wearing only a bright yellow bathing suit. As I stared, taking in her outfit, I tripped in my three-inch platform sandals. Then I decided she had the right idea -- the night was an oven.

muscle memory

It is my instinct to always pay for valet. I believe that my time is valuable and should not be squandered driving in circles. An even worse of use of my time? Driving in circles, annoyed. That said, I will hesitate before valeting because I hate my car. I hate my car so much that I do not wish it upon anyone -- even a valet attendant. So I will usually drive in circles for five minutes, annoyed, before acquiescing to the thing my heart of hearts desired all along.

On Friday night, I valeted the Bookmobile in West Hollywood (for obvious reasons if you've ever tried to park in West Hollywood on a Friday night). When I retrieved my car, I became flummoxed because I could not get the gearshift out of park. I kept trying to force the stick until I eventually sprained my thumb -- an old derby injury, aggravated. Finally, I had to call over the valet attendant, saying, "I don't know what you guys did to my car, but I can't get it out of park." The attendant reached inside and turned the key, igniting the engine. This fixed the problem. I drove to Echo Park, thumb and ego aching.

I played derby for the first time in seven months last night, landing on that bad thumb once again. I skated with my former teammate Crystal Deth in Wreck League -- the recreational leg of LADD. I was a little nervous going in -- seven months off-skates is an eon in Derby Time. But I surprised myself by seemingly picking up where I'd left off: still pretty fast, able to take a hit (many, actually), recover from a fall quickly. My agility and lateral movement didn't seem compromised.

It was bittersweet. I had a blast skating, and it was reassuring to discover that I could still hold my own after a considerable break, but I left practice with a welt on my thigh and an angry thumb. A couple of times during the night, I felt my left arm tingle following a fall. This is really the worst thing that seven years of derby has done to my body: a compressed nerve that runs from my neck down the length of my arm. I still wake up in the middle of the night, my arm completely numb, hand clenched. It's been better since I've stopped playing, but it's still with me.

Practice used to be my favorite part of derby. I was always a more consistent skater in practice than in games because nerves too often got the better of me. During my last season, I felt like I'd plateaued, and practice became a chore. When the only thing I looked forward to was skating in a bout, I knew I was done. So, it was nice to have that old feeling back last night -- of playing a game, for fun, with friends. I just wish it didn't come at such a cost to my body. I'm still thinking about going back next week though.

I have a strong, flexible back. I realize now what a critical role this must've played in my longevity as a derby skater, and in particular, my ability to always bounce right back after the worst of hits. Backbends are one of my strengths in yoga, and I surprised myself by dropping into full camel pose during a class on Saturday. I think now of my mother's back, her spine grossly curved and rounded from scoliosis that went untreated during childhood. Now in her twilight years, her internal organs have shifted.

In other news, during a hike in Chantry Flats on Sunday, I discovered an orchid in full bloom. We found it on our way back down the mountain. We'd missed it on our way up, or perhaps it wasn't there before. At the top of the mountain, we removed the cover to a water tank, which may or may not have been the gates of hell.

good ideas

I also listened to Franzen's Kenyon College Commencement address twice last weekend.

beautiful noise

I attended Big Family Day at MOCA last weekend, and the highlight was my friend Liam's Styrophone Orchestra (Liam is an experimental musician, his instrument of choice being styrofoam). Every participant was handed a styrofoam cooler and a drumstick, which we used to "bow" the cooler.

Liam gives instructions to the musicians.

The cacophony begins.

Adriana gets bossy.

Shit gets punk.

What surprised me most about this event was the lack of boredom. I expected the kids to get sick of playing their Styrophones, but nearly everyone kept going until their instruments were obliterated. I don't know if it's more or less surprising that the same thing applied to the adults. We played our hearts out, chunks of styrofoam flying into the air all around us like a blizzard. As we experimented with the range of sounds we could draw from our Styrophones, the expression on most everyone's face was bliss.

At home later that night, after eating the most satisfying bowl of udon at a Little Tokyo cafe, I sat on my sofa with Adriana and Liam, watching Planet Earth: Ice Worlds, and happily picked styrofoam from my hair.

Haiku Friday

Nightfall: clip clip clip

In bed I hear Lei's toenails

Fall like snow on tile

Mexican Bike Ride

Last weekend, I participated in the bi-annual Rosarito-Ensenada 50-mile bike ride, now in its 32nd year. In the weeks beforehand, whenever I mentioned the ride to someone, the response was invariably the same.

"Is that safe?"

"I'll let you know."

It's an organized event and thousands of people participate each year. On the route's urban stretches, children lined the road with outstretched hands, waiting for the passing riders to toss candy. I felt bad that I was unprepared for this, so I plan to load up next year.

Here's the ride in photos, most of which were taken by Chris.

Chris sizing up the competition at the start line. I appreciated his ensemble because the yellow shorts were easy to spot in the distance when we got separated.

Lady Gladiators (Kathy included).

"If only he was towing a dog . . . and not drinking Tecate Light."

Jesus Shaves.

Message to Zico Coconut Water: SMD.

Fun with photostitch.

The ride is billed as the "number one party on wheels." It seemed like a lot of riders blew their wads early and walked some of the gnarly hills. The route was challenging (and an interesting choice for a party ride), but even after stopping for the occasional beer or margarita along the way, I never considered walking my bike.

And the video that says it all: