Reasons Like Seasons

I once read that families are comparison machines. In the story, it was argued that the close proximity of one sibling to another drives innumerable comparisons to the surface, often with life-long implications for those compared. For years, during the formidable childhood years, kids are told they are this one or that one: this sister is the smart one; this one the outgoing one. This brother is the funny one; this one is good at math. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter if both sisters are outgoing and smart in comparison to the rest of the human beings on the planet. It only matters that this one seems smarter than that one, that this one seems more outgoing than the other. In this way, brothers and sisters learn to carry these beliefs like widgets, widgets of judgement and self-limitation. Widgets that help define who they are and how they see themselves in the world. So, of course, I compare my boys. Boy One was an articulate speaker almost  immediately ...

I apply a woman's smell to everything I touch: The aroma of the winter goddess and bright, chocolate February winds. I clothe myself in control and ---,  an awesome holiday for the lips and flesh. But emotional technology I ignore, the extra romance of tears and cleansing. You are my non-qualified vacation, an eclipse of my mental touch, the threat of nightmares in the sea of discontent, and the inappropriate paid observer. But yet, as the glass sunset beacons me from beyond my common wax mind, in the clouds, I find my path just tangent to the darkest hour.

A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that she had, " determined there is no discernible difference between being a first-time home buyer and having an existential crisis." I think she just about hit the nail on the head with that one. I wish her luck in her quest, but can offer no satisfactory response to her 21st century housing crisis. And yet, I muse on. There is no practical way that I am ready to buy a house. I can barely keep the living conditions in my apartment under control. What with work and children and laundry and four trips to urgent care in the month of May alone, I am already well beyond my zone of proximal development. Yet I dream of owning my own home. When houses in my neighborhood go up for sale, I drive past them slowly, longingly, dreaming of the lives of the people who live there and imagining myself opening the front door to visitors, walking my older son to school, and choosing my own native-inspired, drought-resistant landscaping. Th...

Blog Post 1 In My Distant Youth In my distant youth, one of my very favorite bands was the southern California-based group Something Corporate. I was drawn to them first by a young man, an artist whom I loved and treasured like a precious flame; one I needed to keep warm yet could neither hold nor contain. One day, when I was pulled in more directions than I could count, in my first apartment away from home, he sat me down and said I had to listen to this song. He had it burned on a CD for me, and he loaded it on the old stereo system I had bought with money I collected in high school, and here it is, as I learned to love it, live at the Ventura Theater, sometime around 2002:  https://youtu.be/0NwJWWnn-cw When I used to listen to this song, I would ache: ache for love I wanted more than I could bear, ache for a home where I would have enough room to live; ache to have a dream that I could believe in and call my own. I wanted love, a home, and a dream. Little did I know, th...