"A spill" 5.15.07

The perfume bottle tipped over, she didn't know how. She wasn't paying attention while getting ready in her room. The stinky, sticky substance seeped over the items on her vanity -- love letters tied in red ribbon, a cameo pendant, the edges of a whalebone brush.

She stopped, not sure what to do. She could leave it, a testament to inattention. A mark that she'd been here. Or should she tell the museum curators what happened? This wasn't really her room, after all. She was only visiting. She wondered what the consequences would be. She always made it a point not to ruin historical artifacts. But this was an accident, wasn't it? Or subconsciously, was she trying to go back to that time, to have some influence on the past? The past had always had such a big, unwanted influence on her. Maybe it was time to change the rules of the game a little.

In the end, she walked away. The spill sat there for a while, eventually making itself known by wafting toward the gift shop.

She never returned.

Sometime in spring 2002

I found this in a notebook today as I was packing to move. I can't remember why I wrote it but it made me giggle. I think it might have been from a workshop I did with some elementary school kids when I lived in Redondo Beach. The page before it has five things listed (1. Sarah Ann Bostick; 2. Torrance, CA -- LCM; 3. blue -- powder or dark; 4. yes, because Sarah means "princess"; 5. veterinarian or teacher. Like animals, 5th-grader -- no whiners):

Sarah Bostick the Brave was, well, brave. She wore a blue costume and said brave things such as "I will save all of humanity," and "I will cross the street using the crosswalk because even though it may be more brave to jaywalk, it is also illegal and dangerous."

Sarah, as it turns out, is also a brave princess who likes to climb trees. She will climb up the tallest tree and serve as a lookout for her kingdom, Torrance, CA, also known as the Kingdom of Veterinarians.

One day, Sarah encountered a sick bear in Torrance. The bear was just a baby bear, and it had hurt its paw on a briar patch (this, however, was not Bre'r Bear). Sarah the Brave scrambled up a tree to gather pine needles to help the bear -- she made a soup and gave it to him with the healing needles.

"A kept contract" 5.08.07

When I heard the prompt this time, my first thought was "a kept woman." I suppose a kept woman can also keep a contract. But what happens if she breaks it? What happens if she is beholden only to herself? She may be poor. She won't be lonely.

Contracts to me are fluid, because what really holds them together? Words, like Angie [writing group participant] said. Words can be stricken, erased. If I don't care about the punishment, why would I care about a contract?

Construction outside is distracting me. Funny how city contracts for road work almost always take longer than agreed upon -- "The freeway will be open again in a week!" Yeah, right.

It's hard for me to write about contracts that are kept because contracts always end at some point. The Earth's contract is about to expire. Mother Nature is sick and tired of all this god-damned construction noise.

"A broken contract" 5.08.07

One time I didn't pay my car payment on time. The bank called me and asked what was up. I said I didn't have any money. "But it's only $160!" bank man said. "I know. I don't have it." I would hate to have his job, calling up people and berating them in his subtle, nonplussed way. OK, he wasn't berating me, and $160 really isn't a lot for a car payment, but I didn't have it. I was 27, that's my excuse.

My boyfriend and I are moving in together this month and we decided to draft a couples contract because he thinks I'm a little dangerous. Money doesn't rule my life, so there must be something wrong with me. Granted he hasn't said these things out loud, but those are the stories I've heard all my life in America. Don't you want the American Dream? Don't you want money pouring out of your ears? The funny part is that I've gotten the most money when I wanted it the least.

My hairdresser told me the marketing or negotiating theory goes like this: The person who wants it the least will get it.

I think that may be problematic, though, if I really, really don't want something.

"Write about a path" 4.07.06

Here's another one I found in my notebook. This is from about a year ago, when I was doing writing practice with a couple of friends. There are two notes at the top of the page: "(Decorative soap)" and "Luis Rodriguez."

Here I am in the middle of a forest. There's a path over there. Hmm...How the hell did I get here, anyway?

Paths are meant to be walked on, but they don't occur naturally.

I remember reading an analysis of "The Road Less Taken" by Robert Frost. I think most people assume that the end of the poem is happy or optimistic. This writer, though, said that maybe the fact that the speaker in the poem took the road less traveled isn't such a great thing. Maybe the "difference" in "and that has made all the difference" is actually regret. Because who built that less-traveled road anyway? Where did it lead to? Loneliness? Despair? Maybe sometimes the best path is the one that's been proven to work. Maybe the smoothest ride is the best, for obvious reasons. Who wants to struggle, anyway?

I saw Alice Walker being interviewed in L.A. a couple of years ago. It was at the Festival of Books and I just saw her for a few minutes. I was standing on the outskirts of the crowd. I remember what she said, though. She said this is the way life works: We fall in love, we get our hearts broken, we learn, and we start all over again.

I start walking on the path and I don't feel very happy about it. I'm lost, after all. What difference does a path make if I'm lost? It could get me even more lost if I follow it.

Maybe being lost is being found. When I'm lost I can't think of anything else besides the fact that I'm lost. Being lost means I'm free because I don't know where I am. I can't say what defines me. I'm simply myself. And everything. All at once.

"I remember..." 12.03.05

Here's one from the archives:

I remember when ice cream was invented. It was during the Ice Age, naturally, and the creatures or whatever they were, surely not dinosaurs, they must have been furry, anyway, the creatures wanted to eat something sweeter than just snow and ice. So they made ice cream. I don't know if there were cows around. But if there were furry creatures there must have been something that could be milked. I remember that everyone liked the ice cream, but they kept getting ice cream headaches, which led to the next invention, Tylenol.

Celestial Homework

I found this reading list for the course, "Literary History of the Beat Generation," taught by Allen Ginsberg at Naropa Institute in the summer of 1977. Blake, Burroughs, Cocteau, Doestoevsky, Eliot, Keats, Melville, Poe, Proust, Shakespeare, Shelley... Reading this list makes me wish I could be a professional English major. :)

You Can Read a Poem

I was surfing around on literary sites the other day and ran across this very accessible site about reading poetry. The very first example uses one of my favorite poems, by William Carlos Williams (there's even a cute little photo of him):

This is just to say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Enjoy!

"Balance (and whoop-de-do)" 5.01.07

Yesterday in yoga I was able to balance in tree pose with my eyes closed for the first time. Whoop-de-doo! No, really, it was pretty cool.

I've been wondering lately if the reason I feel more drawn to Buddhist mindfulness meditation than some of the less directed meditations we've been doing in yoga is because that was my first experience of meditating. Does that mean it's best, because I learned it first and that's what I feel comfortable with?

That thought made me think about my writing style. I wrote a lot of letters when I was younger. They were good letters. My mom even told me so when she read one of them without my permission that had been stored on the computer. Grr...

Anyway, my writing style is personal and informal, like a letter. I love the idea of epistolary novels -- stories written expressly in the form of letters between characters. How fascinating to be able to sit on someone's shoulder and watch their thoughts congeal on paper. Like blood and brain matter flowing through a pen.

"Floral jardin" 5.01.07

(Looking at a pink paint chip)

I looked on a weather Web site the other day and saw that it was 75 in Paris -- much warmer than San Diego that day. It's been a little more than a year since I went to Paris with my mom. At that time, in early March, we were lucky if it reached over 35.

My boyfriend says he wants to travel, but I'm not sure he knows what he's getting into. I don't know if he realizes what a serious addiction it is. He already has a self-admitted addiction to the playa during Burningman, but I wonder if he knows what it feels like to have visited and then spend the rest of your life pining for London, Baltimore, New York, Kiev, Amsterdam, Brussels, ah, Brussels, Boston, and Paris. He hasn't been to any of these places. I've been to all of them and more, and sometimes I wish they still existed in my imagination only. Then I wouldn't have to long for places that are really real.

"Flat tinted white" 5.1.07

(Looking at a white paint chip)

That pretty much describes my skin color. My boyfriend called me Pale Princess for a while, until I asked him to stop. He can't say much, though, because he's just slightly more tinted than I am. He has a friend whom we see at camping trips in the Burningman group sometimes who always comments on how pale we look together. The flat tinted white couple. And here I always thought I would end up with someone much more exotic.

"I'd like to tell you about the day I had" 4.10.07

(Looking at a postcard with a picture of Ganesh on it)

I'd like to tell you about the day I had. I was wandering around minding my own business when my parents started bugging me. Man, they wouldn't leave me alone! We got into a bit fight, which ended, as you might expect, with my head getting chopped off. Dang. Luckily, I stumbled upon the carcass of an elephant and -- voila! -- Ganesh!

I really don't remember how that Hindu tale goes. I get frustrated sometimes when I can't remember details of things. I recall feelings much more clearly. "What was that movie about?" I don't know, but I know I liked it. "What were you fighting about?" I have no idea.

Ganesh has a lot of arms. I wonder if it gets confusing.

I'm thinking about attending a workshop called "The 8 Limbs of Yoga." Actually I think it probably has a fancier title, but that's the gist of it. It's going to be taught by a 3rd-level Ashtanga practitioner. She is a woman and I hear it's rare that women are able to reach that level because of our lack of sufficient upper-body strength. I bet Ganesh would have no problems, even if he were female, what with that extra set of arms.

One time in fiction workshop in college, a guy came into class with a decidedly nonfiction story about the details of our last class meeting -- who sat where, who said what, who insulted whom. It felt very surreal. Of course, I don't remember any of the details.

In another class taught by the same instruction, a general writing class, I wrote a piece of fiction. The teacher had one comment on my story -- "You can't say she turned a slow shade of red. Shade of red cannot be slow." Ok, thanks.

Sometimes I wonder if my critic is making money at my job or I am.

Oh, dear, what was the writing prompt -- Let me tell you about the day I had... Hmm, if someone started a sentence like that I think the boredom lights would blink on immediately. But maybe that's just the critic talking.

"A goodbye" 3.27.07

I said goodbye, but I didn't really mean it. Does anyone, really? It's like that girl who lived in Grover's Corners in that play I saw in high school. She just wouldn't go away, would she? I remember I was supposed to like the play. It's "Our Town" for God's sake. But I thought it was going to be uplifting -- Our town, yeah, this is where we belong, right? Wrong. You're dead, move along.

Spalding Gray played the narrator in "Our Town" during his career. He said goodbye to his family when he stepped off the ferry into the frigid water. He just slipped away. Gone. Although he did take the time to say goodbye.

I tend to linger in my farewells. It's the same way in my writing. One time I took a workshop in beginnings of stories. We wrote several opening paragraphs, it was great. I think I'd do very well at writing a book if someone else would just finish it up for me.

We're supposed to be writing about a goodbye. Just one? And what about a badbye? Why isn't that a term? Certainly they do happen. I think that just proves that the phrase goodbye is pure convention. It means nothing.

In yoga, sometimes my instructors talk about creating a continuous breath, with no real break between the inhale and the exhale. There is no inhale or exhale, just breath. There is no life or death, just energy. There is no hello. No goodbye.

But that really is the ultimate goodbye if we get down to it isn't it, death? Death pisses me off. It's like there are only two options in dealing with it -- either ignoring it or becoming a goth kid and focusing one's life around it. Although that's kind of like ignoring it, too. Ignore life and you ignore death. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe.

I felt nervous when I heard the prompt, write about a goodbye, because they're never really happy. Light and airy. Although my mom says she's not afraid of saying goodbye anymore after watching my grandfather die. I envy her that. She was the only one in the room who wasn't crying.

Goodbye. The hardest work for a girl to say to her father as he puts her on a plane after a week's visit. When will I see you again? I don't know. But Barry Manilow's song "Weekend in New England" makes her cry at age 6. When will I see you again?

Goodbye.

"If I hadn't been interrupted" 3.20.07

If I hadn't been interrupted by these talents that haunt me, I think I'd be a lot more content -- "You have such a nice voice, you should be a singer!" "You should write more!" "You should counsel people!" Whatever I do, it never seems to be enough to please all those people who are subverting their own hidden talents.

If I hadn't been interrupted by my burning desire to create, and to share my creations, I might be stuck back at age 8. Done before I began. But it's there, it's still there, gnawing at me, taunting me, reminding me that I am different. A boss told me once that he liked having me on the editorial board of the paper because I thought about things so differently. I had no idea what he was talking about. I thought everybody thought like me.

If I hadn't been interrupted by the time warning, I might have kept writing forever.

A new blog begins

I recently found a local writing group that meets once a week. We are given a prompt and a time limit, and we go from there, keeping our hands moving and honoring whatever comes onto the page, in the spirit of Natalie Goldberg and her book "Writing Down the Bones." I actually had seen this group mentioned before somewhere on the Web about a year ago, yet I didn't join it at the time. I'm not sure why not, but I think I wasn't ready. It's been a long time since I earned my degree in creative writing, and it's been a long time since I've felt inspired to be creative. I think now that I have a bit more solid ground under my feet, I feel ready to explore that side of my life again. I miss it. I'd like to share some of my creative explorations with you here.

As a caveat, I must mention that sometimes I may write things about people in my life. I will try not to post anything too embarrassing or revealing, but please bear in mind that whatever I create is done in the spirit of love and healing. Also, although I'll be choosing certain selections from my writing practice to post, I won't be editing the actual writing. This is a place for my subconscious mind to play, not a place for my critical mind to judge.

When I went to London in 2001, I visited the poet John Keats' house, and it was one of the most sublime experiences of my life. These writings and this creative journey are in honor of him and his spirit.