3 years A.F.

A.F. stands for After Frankie. It's 3 years ago today he died.

The funny thing is, though Frankie and I were close, I doubt he'd have had the same supreme importance to me if he had not died. If I had not had the privilege of buying him frozen yogurts and holding his hand in the waiting room for the afterlife called the Country Villa Nursing Home. There's something about going through that with a person, especially one as flawed and beautiful as Frankie, that softens you.

Right now, though, I don't know if I can handle being this soft.

I am mush, just gushing out in all directions.

Life vs. art

A short story I wrote, called "Richard," appears in the summer edition of Per Contra, an online magazine. You can read it here.

I hadn't read the story in a while. When I did, I started to sweat. Not because I don't like it: I'm definitely proud of the story. But because it bears a striking but not entirely faithful resemblance to real life.

Do our loved ones, the family and friends whose traits find their way into our stories, understand that they are only singular ingredients in our characters? Or do they believe that the sometimes unflattering, warts-and-all people who bear such a strong imprint of them are actual representations of how we see them, with only the names changed?

Sometimes I think I worry too much about hurting people's feelings to write successful fiction.

Un-satisfaction

The song you're listening to right now (that is, if you hit play below) used to be my theme song. "Unsatisfied." In a way it still is. But my lack of satisfaction takes a different form these days - it's the motivating kind, not the debilitating kind it used to be.

To me, satisfaction = stagnation. And dissatisfaction doesn't equal unhappiness. I can be completely happy - thrilled even - with my life at the moment without being utterly satisfied by it. I'm just the kind of girl who wants more.

I used to see this as a flaw. But now... I'm a believer in dissatisfaction as a motivator. Nothing lights a fire under my butt like the desire for something better. For all the exhortations out there in the new-agey sectors of our culture to "live in the now," I believe we do our best work today when our eyes are on tomorrow. I know I do. This doesn't mean we're living in some pipe dream of what's to come, it means we're actively working, creating what's to come.

Here's to un-satisfaction.

The California Current

I'm sitting here on a Friday night, after a nice dinner out with friends, with the faint feeling of camaraderie lingering and a belly full of sauteed snap peas, mashed potatoes, and chocolate soup. Tomorrow, I'll rise early and pack the car with SCUBA gear and head up the 101 to Malibu, a place that, despite its status as a magnet for crazies and full-of-themselves pseudo-celebs, despite its fires and rockslides, has a spiritual grace that's always moved me. I'll pass through the slice of Malibu Canyon, and feel the weight of worry lift off my shoulders. When I turn at Bluffs Park and descend down into the vast amazement of the sprawled-out ocean, I'll be struck dumb as always with gratitude that I get to live here. Of all the places on God's earth, I've found my way to California, and I'm glad.

The life I have here - it's not like the life I had before. I have a life of sunshine and water. My body moves differently in it, with the confidence of someone coming home. I don't know if people who've lived here their whole lives can even understand this, the pull this place has on someone like me. The California Current flows in my veins.

"California" by Michael Mulder

I love piggies

Oh, my goodness. Swine flu. How sad for the piggies.

Did you know that in Egypt, a country with not one case of swine flu, the government has ordered all pigs slaughtered? It's no small thing, either, as people raise pigs not just on farms but also in the courtyards of their apartment buildings and in the garbage dumps on the outskirts of Cairo. Bye bye livelihood. Not only that, but the piggies serve an important function: they eat up all the garbage. Will Egypt become a dump once its piggies are gone?

When we were in high school, my brother Eddie caught typhoid fever, a supposedly extinct disease, because some employee at a restaurant he went to on a class trip to NYC was a carrier. They say it's because this carrier didn't wash his/her hands before serving or preparing food. OK, yuck. I agree. But mostly, beyond the hand washing, I'm about as far from a germophobe as you can get. Gimme dirt, germs, and lots of 'em, that's what I say: builds up immunity. So I'm about as worried about catching Swine Flu as I am about being drafted into the US military. Which, at my age, is not very.

As of a couple of days ago, L.A. has its very own swine flu death toll. Or do we? First the two deaths were, then they weren't, swine flu-related. The latest, according to the coroner, is that they're definitely not. It's certainly true that the count is rising, but how high, realistically, is it?

The last time we had a swine flu scare, the government was estimating 1 million deaths. They were very, very wrong. Of course, the situation was totally different: all the swine flu sufferers were soldiers at Fort Dix, and it never spread beyond there. You can read a pretty thorough report on what happened in 1976 here. This time it's definitely more serious, though, because its reach is geographically much wider. So is there more to be scared of? Umm, maybe, if you're the kind of person who's scared of that kind of thing. Me, I'm still waiting for my draft notice.

In the meantime, I'm gonna go kiss me a pig.

Hopelessly Romantic

Last week, while I was home in New England to help my parents celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, an ex-boyfriend of mine called me a hopeless romantic. I was offended for a minute, until I realized it was true.

I'm a romantic, that's for sure. I believe in love. I have experienced it, and, with parents married 50 years, I've got great role models for it. More on point, I believe in romance, that magical, over the top, ridiculous representation of love that's the stuff of movies and books, dramas and comedies. I ache for it. I long for it.

But - and here comes the hopeless part, maybe you can relate - somewhere along the way romance chewed me up and spit me out. I lost hope. Doesn't mean I stopped looking for it, just that I lost my grip on where, when, and how it appears. I no longer knew the way to romance's natural habitat. Maybe I never did. Like someone trying to make lemonade with a grape, I've tried to squeeze it out of the most inappropriate fruit for God knows how many years. It feels somehow safer, which I guess on some level it is, if you like the idea of lemonade but are worried the flavor might disappoint.

Safety is good. When I go diving, I strive for it. I protect myself by having working gear, appropriate training, and partners I can trust. But the truth is that the only thing I can do to absolutely guarantee I won't die or be injured in a dive related incident is not to go diving at all. It's the same with romance. The only guarantee I won't get hurt comes from not even entering the water. While I can't exactly commit to that one - the ocean and love are both too much fun to be abandoned - I have spent way too much time as of late in the shallows. The shallows can be a blast: for one thing, all the dive students tend to lose their gear there, and you might pick up a cool snorkel if you look. Because air lasts longer in shallower water, you can stay down for a very long time. But the coolest critters, they're all down deep.

Hmm.

Is it too late to become a hopeful romantic?

I went to Easter Mass today, at a church up the road from me here in Silver Lake. It was nice enough, had enough of the old rituals to be satisfying. The singer had this big "Les Miserables" style musical theater voice, which was a little odd to hear in church. Still, there was singing and incense and communion and shaking hands with thy neighbor, so it was good. It's not a church I typically go to, but I woke up too late for Our Lady of the Angels, unless I wanted to go to Spanish Mass. I kind of like to know what's being said.

The sermon was pretty interesting. The Gospel was the usual one for Easter, telling about the Marys, then Peter and John, arriving at the tomb to find Jesus gone. The priest pointed out that the first response to the risen Christ wasn't joy or excitement. It was fear. Maybe even terror. The response to change, no matter how positive and beautiful and glorious, is pretty much always fear.

This really struck a chord with me. I'm on the brink of a lot of new stuff, not minor stuff, though it can sometimes feel trivial. Some of it potentially life changing. And I'm terrified. What if I make the wrong choice? What if it's not really even my choice to make? Is my fate in the hands of someone else? Will that someone hurt me? What if I give up the serenity of acceptance for the courage to change? Does the wisdom to know the difference even enter into the equation? I'm not sure I'll ever have that one.

It would seem, to some people, that I live a life of risk and excitement. And I do. You wouldn't necessarily think of me as someone who's scared of much. But in one area of my life I am so, so sheltered, so afraid. I want to stop being afraid. I want to move on to the next phase of change, the one past fear, the one with the forward motion. That's what I'm hoping for this Easter.

Happy Easter to all of you!