May 2012
5 posts
3 tags
“I wanna say a little something that’s long overdue. The disrespect to...”
– MCA, “Sure Shot”
3 tags
April 2012
2 posts
March 2012
1 post
2 tags
Here's to Adrienne Rich
"Diving Into The Wreck"
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close...
February 2012
2 posts
2 tags
“She’s 19 going on 30, or, maybe she’s really 30 now. It’s hard...”
– Ani DiFranco from “Tamburitza Lingua”
January 2012
2 posts
bi-coastal: My sister came to visit last week... →
goldenhill:
My sister came to visit last week before I started my second semester. We participated in our usual sister activities: trading clothes, swapping sunglasses and stories about our parents, and complaining that we don’t wear the same shoe size. We went thrift shopping in all of my new favorite…
“Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick and pull yourself together.”
– Elizabeth Taylor
December 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Saul Alinsky
So, Rules For Radicals is changing up my game in a big way. If you haven’t read it and you’re interested in social activism (shouldn’t we all be?), I encourage you to pick it up.
First, the rules:
1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you
have
2. Never go outside the experience of your people
3. Wherever possible, go outside the experience of the...
4 tags
I’m doing more writing than I have in years and it’s amplifying my creativity in really unexpected ways (ex. I woke up and wrote my boyfriend a love letter on a lampshade). I forgot how invigorating nonfiction academic writing can be. Yeah, I said it. There’s something about analyzing social policy that really fuels me. Change isn’t nebulous. It can be tracked, defined and...
November 2011
5 posts
2 tags
San Diego: November
It’s 64 degrees with cloudless skies. A boy on a skateboard in oversized black sunglasses and jeans tighter than mine stops to ask me where I got my boots. I look at him- he looks young to me. All false confidence and beach blonde hair. I tell him, “The Salvation Army in Chalmette” and look back down at my book. He says, “How long ago?” I look up again. I have to...
2 tags
“Yeah, I wanna do right. But not right now.”
– Gillian Welch
“Look At Miss Ohio”
4 tags
He’s the Paul Taylor to my Dorothea Lange
So I’m in individual supervision with my field instructor and I explain that I want to make the multi-purpose space that had essentially become a storage room a group therapy space. She loves the idea, gives me a budget and sends me to it. I work on it during the downtime. It’s a nice reprieve from therapy and case management. So the other day I’m going through a box and I find...
“You use up everything you’ve got trying to give everybody what they want.”
– Nina Simone
October 2011
8 posts
1 tag
facts about my eye
Saturday I got a gruesome migraine. I took something to sleep (around noon) and mindlessly started rubbing the base of my palm in a circular motion against my right eye. Maybe I was trying to unlock the pain lodged just under my browbone? I don’t know. I just know between the migraine and the meds, I was not lucid. Right, so when I sleepily opened my eye about a half an hour later, it was...
4 tags
2 tags
I Think Maybe
We probably shouldn’t exploit the personal lives of those around us while espousing the virtues of privacy. Just a thought.
Yeah, you took the photo, but the identity belongs to someone else. Doesn’t anyone believe in living a private life anymore? I deleted my facebook 5 months ago because I honestly think we’re starting to forget what privacy really means. Privacy is when I...
1 tag
“Save me. Save me. Save me from what I want.”
– St. Vincent
2 tags
Ever wake up and feel like you’ve got all the energy you could ever need, for like maybe another three hours? This was my Saturday morning. J and I made breakfast and then I read about social welfare policy in the era of Lyndon B. Johnson. Once I got to the next chapter, on Richard Nixon, I closed the book to avoid a wave of depression and anxiety that might ruin our plans: hiking in Torrey...
3 tags
I have bangs. Again. I cut them myself in front of the bathroom mirror, leaned over the sink with a pair of fabric shears. Yeah. It came to that. So I go in the next day to have A. fix up my hair, knowing I’ve botched my bangs. She says, “Do you want the bangs worn forward or to the side?” I’m like, “Both. Is both possible?”
I got my first official client on...
3 tags
“Partial Knowledge of Things” by Joshua Miller
Disclosed unLocation, 10/1/11. South Park Walkabout
September 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Life Tools: Empathic Responding
Folks, I want to teach you a really quick trick that may (or may not) save you during a potential relationship meltdown. It’s called empathic responding. Let me set the scene:
J’s partner is having a rough go of it. Completely overwhelmed by the massive amount of reading and studying she has to do, not to mention the emotional stress associated with the trauma she is exposed to at her...
5 tags
1 tag
How's The Internship?
So people don’t like to talk about reality. A lot of people say they’re open to learning about new things, but I’m finding that these “new” experiences are maybe just stories/situations/concepts that are easy to process, label, and file away for later re-telling at a dinner party. My internship for the first year of my MSW program is at a long-term residential...
2 tags
“Oh you’ll get over it…eventually.”
7 tags
August 2011
11 posts
3 tags
3 tags
I wrote for a film magazine...
up until this time last year while I worked here. I’m in the process of organizing some media and thought it might be nice to have a few links here…not that any of this holds any immediate relevancy to where I am now; only that I was fortunate enough to work alongside the people paving the way for a sustainable film industry in Louisiana. Here are a few of their stories:
My favorite...
I moved to San Diego and out of necessity, worked a corporate job radically different than any I’ve ever worked before. It ended yesterday. I’m grateful for the experience and the opportunity. Free from the 9-5 with some time to myself, I know I learned more about myself than I sacrificed of myself while working there.
Now, I take a two-week vacation before I start something...
click me. i'm worth every minute i distract you... →
From 2006-2009, I worked side-by-side with Jonathan David Evans. It’s one of those past lives I don’t think about very often, but when I do it’s always with warm affection and, in retrospect, a great deal of humor. Recently, a coworker found the mynameisjohnmichael music video for “Every Night of the Year” (below) and it completely caught me off guard, as it seemed...
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
1 post
May 2011
1 post
weekends look like this
April 2011
3 posts
2 tags
i spent my easter holiday in palm desert, california, swimming in vodka cocktails and fighting on-again, off-again insomnia in a giant king sized bed. if you haven’t slept on a king sized bed in a while, you’ll be surprised at what a waste of space it is. who needs a bed that big? i mean, other than people who hate sleeping next to each other. i proudly write this from my double/full...
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to...”
– Anaïs Nin
1 tag
seasick
i was a deconstructionist before i ever learned to build. i can’t believe in much for very long without feeling betrayed by it. i don’t trust your body with my body. i don’t believe you in motion as much as i believe you in photographs. i got everything i want and now i want more. nothing- you can rest easy- nothing alone will ever be enough.
March 2011
2 posts
1 tag
2 tags
Dear San Diego,
First, I want to apologize for saying “I hate you” last night…and again this morning. I’ve been told expletives are used most regularly by those with a limited vocabulary. Perhaps I’m biased here, but I don’t think that’s true. However, I do think “hate” is a word people use as filler- when they’re afraid of saying how they really feel about something. See, that’s the thing;...