Rocky Mountain High
Armed with my black pen and handmade journal, I am sitting out on the back deck, which overlooks the Rocky Mountains. The peaks are covered in snow – an unfamiliar element to these native Angeleña eyes –and I keep gazing out at them, hoping they’ll whisper their secrets to me. There are no secrets in Los Angeles. It’s too hot and bright and phony for mystery. Yet like it or not, it is my home, and at 31 I am growing resigned to the prospect of never living elsewhere. Now though. Now I am here, and I am more often trying to live in the Now. The mountains provide a snow-capped, otherworldly backdrop to my scribbles, and I am…
A Grown-Up Job
$13/hr. One week vacation the first year. Overtime expected. Looking for a go-getter with a can-do attitude, 5+ years of experience. Send us resume and cover letter explaining what makes you stand out from the crowd. What is it with employers these days? I think to myself as I scroll through the 5th job board of the day. I spend most days jumping through elaborate hoops, with a folder of 12 different resumes, 12 cover letters, 2 portfolios, 5 salary histories and 1 list of references, only to not hear back from 99.99% of places I contact. I keep a spreadsheet of every place and position for which I apply, so I…
Some Thoughts and Songs on Spirituality
I don’t often write publicly about my spirituality for the same reason a new mother doesn’t take her infant out to a Metallica concert; it’s growing and sensitive, it doesn’t need exposure to angry forces, and I feel like protecting it from the world during this formative time. Unfortunately no stranger to spiritual abuse and manipulation, I am more cautious with that aspect of myself now that I’ve been around that block a few times. Why people feel the need to bully others about their spiritual journey I’ll never know. Yet it is a big part of me, as much as my physical and emotional life. Sometimes I feel a…
Beautiful Music
In another life I was a piano teacher. I had quit the piano at age ten, like most kids, in a fit of impatience with my elderly teacher and a disinterest in practicing. I didn’t want to play the songs from my grandparent’s childhood found in John Thompson’s Modern Course for the Piano (circa 1936), I wanted to play the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique. I wanted to play beautiful music. After a few years of piano-free existence, at thirteen, using the knowledge I’d accumulated from all those years of lessons, I taught myself Für Elise. It took about a year of unsteady practice, and after mastering that I moved…
Breaking Up with A Drama Queen
Broken hearts – most of us have had them. I, however, am the Queen of Broken Hearts. Not because I’m special or have had my heart broken more than the average person, but because I am dramatic. I can take a little heartbreak and turn it into a rock opera; I have been known to take YEARS to get over a lost love (to be fair, those particular years were times I spent off my antidepressants). So when my excellent friend Jen Kehl over at My Skewed View announced that her Twisted MixTape blog hop theme for this week would be broken hearts, I had to jump in, even though I don’t…
That Song
Okay, breathe. In and out, in and out… It is Shavasana in yoga, which can also be translated as “corpse pose.” Instead of contorting myself into twisty, impossible positions, I must lie on the mat and try to wipe the grime from my mind. I must be still. Okay, I need to go to the store after this. Eggs, olive oil, tissue. Or should I try to squeeze in some writing first? Gah, okay, clear mind, clear mind… I squirm at the itchy spot on my shoulder-blade, and try again, breathing in and out to the music. Clear mind, clear mind… Then a new song begins. I am clutching my…
When I Go There Now
The air felt thickly liquid and smelled so cloying I could hardly stand it. I felt like I could become intoxicated just from breathing the sticky-sweet air. Funny how I had never noticed the odor before. Everyone in the room clutched frosty glasses of beer, with the occasional glass of red wine. You didn’t come here for the wine, though – you came to this hole-in-the-wall on the pier for the beer. You could choose from 88 kinds on tap if you didn’t fancy the hundreds of bottled craft brews. A veritable rainbow of alcoholic colors filled the glasses around the room, from honey to wheat to washed-up-on-the-beach tar, for the…
