I knew this February 14 would be spent un-romantically: I don’t have a boyfriend, husband, or even lover. And that darn vow!

But Valentine’s Day, especially over the past couple of years, has never been strongly associated with romance, Hallmark, and candy hearts for me; rather, the 14th day of our second month is strongly tied to  loss and memory, to spirituality and hope. Valentine’s  is both my brother’s birthday and a very special weekend I spent meditating alone in the northern mountains of Sa Pa, Vietnam.

But, as Valentine’s Day nears, I see that it will be exactly perfect: I will be traveling with my ex-boyfriend, to my parents’, to visit my brother’s bench.

I sat zazen this evening and realized that — no — not the most romantic day, but a day certainly full of love on all fronts.

Evoking (and invoking) Socrates, all I have to offer for tonight’s post are more questions:

• Can “crush” (generation 2)  actually mean “learning to love anew”?
• Are some types of love more dangerous than others?
• Doesn’t all love carry with it some inherent danger?
• Is it “dangerous” to be vulnerable?
• Isn’t love, really, the safest bet of all?
• When is love “not worth it”? When is it worth everything?
• Does love have a quantifiable value? If so, would you pay it?
• If it’s probable to re-love an old love, is it equally probable to un-love a new love?
• What if that new love and old love are the same love?
• Is love is love is love? Was all love created equal?
• Since when does having a crush mean breaking a vow of celibacy?
• Can one have sex and still honor the original intention of abstinence?
• How is it that I don’t care about any of these questions, and that I already know the answer?

 ”Substract love from love and the remainder is love” – Upanishads

(oops)

Wow wow wow wow wow wow, wow.

Ooh. Those great foam rollers everyone loves. The ones you crawl around on to stretch out the muscles. The perfect self-massage. I do a solid 30 minutes before bed. Ah, now I’ll really be able to sleep. read more »

As yesterday was the Official Last Day of my “vow of celibacy“  [I'm officially re-naming this project after having received much confusion and outrage over its apparent misleading moniker. Name TBD], I have to admit to being a little sad.

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Wow.

This vow is harder than I thought; and easier; and more effective. Oh, the opportunity to self-learn is excruciating.

Do you know how liberating it is to go out clubbing in ratty jeans, an over-sized t-shirt, and sneakers bought in Vietnam that now have worn holes on the toes while everyone else is in spandex?

Very.

But do you know the kind of response you get when you bust a move to Bel Biv Devoe in downtown Oakland while not giving two licks what you look like?

Pretty positive.

And please don’t mention to anyone that you are on a vow of celibacy / flirting or dating haitus; trust me, they will take it as a bona fide challenge, and it doesn’t help.

Thankfully, I made it home un-satisfied.

1. My loyalty to ATT (still typing on iPhone… Stupid “U-verse”

2. Coffee at 4pm

3. Attempting to make risotto in under 10 minutes

4. Telling new coworkers I write a blog

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For the next 48 hours, Picasso turned into a submarine. A black stealth metal whale diving to depths only giant squid and phosphorescent fish occupied. He was slow and deliberate, moving through dark waters displacing particle for particle, as if water had become metal, and then metal to water, and back again to hard steel. He lost all of his skin and was an empty skeleton, no blood, no veins, no pulse. He became the ocean itself, a frozen body of water, the moon and surface merging. The center of him was empty, and his limbs were everywhere.

That is when he knew he was home. That was the second kiss.

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“Kissing is weird.”

Picasso absentmindedly plucked his thumbnail against his front tooth.

“I mean, just think about mouths. These gaping wet holes with banana slug inchings, strange muscles, flipping and flopping about –not to mention dental fences along the property line, and lip hedging that seal off an entrance. Extraño…muy extraño“

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No, I’m not speaking in tongues, I just was thinking that, maybe NaNoWriMo was a little ambitious? I probably should have signed on for this one instead: http://www.nablopomo.com/

Does this post count as one? Okay, fine: back to Picasso.

NaNoWriMo off to a… er… um… start. Not sure what kind of start. Forgive me, Oh God of the Written Word! (Forgive me NKS readers) Now I remember why I don’t write fiction… Chapter 1:

This is a story about a man who is beautiful. He will be named Picasso. Picasso is stoic and strong, small in stature but a spirit with as much rigidity and ice as a frozen bag of coffee. The smell of him is just as amazing. Soft. His wrist alone could slay princesses in Morocco. When he shifts — throws it into 5th as he goes speeding along the damp freeway overpass, just newly dewed upon — he is fluid and powerful as water. He drives lightly and with arrow-straight speed, no wasting vectors, and his lips are always pursed as he looks 12 cars ahead – as skillfully as a chess player thinks 12 moves ahead – and even though you could say he was Driving Itself, it is cold-as-snow-apparent in his caramel face that he is condemned to self awareness.

I think I am in love with this Picasso.

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Shoot!

NaNoWriMo 2009 has begun and I’m already 5 days behind!

The past days a blur and hardly taking note that the 11th month of the year has already started, I woke up in the middle of the night audibly crying, “Oh, crap! It’s November! NANOWRIMO noooooooooooo!”

Now, without the faintest idea of a novel concept, already 8,000 words behind, and with the knowledge that I’m on vacation for two weeks this month, the smart thing to do would be to surrender and forgo a NaNo novel this year… but we all know I’m not all that bright.

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What does loss teach us about love?

Loss is a fluid that eases with time but never goes away, only shifts and eddys, pooling as memory. Its pokes and sharpnesses dull, but always is stored in a pocket of the heart, and balloons from time to time when triggered and bumped.

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Making efforts to coordinate a PHX production of “BURST” before heading back home to my beloved California. In the meantime, you can enjoy a snippet of the show with some new footage from my opening show in Santa Fe, NM.

For all you long-term readers who were around from the beginning and remember the Craiglist “20 Dates in 20 Days in 20 Words” Project, you can rejoice because I finally was able to use the material, and incorporated it into my show:

“20/20/20″ scene from Act I:

For more video and photos from “BURST,” click here.

“The quality which makes man want to write and be read is essentially a desire for self-exposure and masochism. Like one of those guys who has a compulsion to take his thing out and show it on the street.” – James Jones

More collaborative poems with my mentor David Bromige… read more »

‘There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write.” – Terry Pratchett

More collaborative poems with my mentor David Bromige… read more »

“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.” -Sidney Sheldon

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More collaborative poems with David Bromige, my mentor… and don’t ask me who Janice or Betty is. Or if you do, I’ll tell you they are perfect illustrations of David’s humor. Putting a name like “Betty” in a poem? Writing about a jazz singer we don’t know? David was always reminding me not to take myself nor poetry too seriously…

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“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” -Emily Dickinson

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To honor my mentor David Bromige, who passed away this past week, I will be posting some poems written under his tutelage or in collaboration. We would make a cup of tea, set arbitrary rules, and away we wrote~

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It is with extreme sadness and spiked loss that I mention the passing of my friend and mentor, David Bromige.  I wanted to be able to write a great spread of prose or poetry, honoring his sharp wit, playful creativity, and a life in words.

But for now, I will just provide this link and some quotes I captured during our lazy days writing poetry in the garden of his Sebastopol home… because sometimes things need time to sink in before the words come.

My love and support to his family Cecilia, Maggie & Chris.

DAVID BROMIGE QUOTES / FOUND POEMS read more »