Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Night Fever

It seems like every ten years or so I am hit by a sudden need to watch Saturday Night Fever. Perhaps it's because my son Jude just turned eight, the exact same age I was when Ma took me to Westwood Village to a ten pm show with her boyfriend Jay. 

In all fairness, I begged. I pleaded and moaned. I got down on my scabby roller-skater girl knees and shouted. I didn't get that is was inappropriate. It didn't matter that it would give me nightmares.  This was a matter of disco. It was 1978 and disco was everything. It was disco or die as far as I was concerned. If only I could convince Ma to take me, I'd score major points with peer pressure. The older kids would accept me into their roller clubs, friends would revere me, and surfer Jered would take me out on a date to 7-11, ogling over my maturity.  As it was, everyone was already jealous that I had such a cool mom. 

"But I already got you those fucking satin pants, Roxanne. And look? You ruined them already."

Sure enough there were holes in my Starburst Orange satin disco pants within a week of purchase. She didn't believe me when I told her the holes were caused by my brother Ben farting on them so many times, with such putrid blasts, that several holes were burned into them. "I don't see how else it happened, Ma."

"No way, Roxanne, " Ma huffed, leaving a trail of smoke all over my disco moves. "And I don't see how your roller skating teacher could assign a movie for homework. We're not going. Now turn that down!"

"Well... it's more like she suggested it. Come on, Ma. Even you think John Travolta is cute. You said yourself you wanted to go see it!"

I don't know how or why Ma finally caved; perhaps my incessant begging eroded her common sense. Though I suppose it may have had something to do with Jay, who like many of Ma's boyfriends, considered me a pain in the ass, worthy of consequences, given he worked in corrections. Or possibly, likely, because both of them weren't too far away from youth themselves, remembering what it was like to crave the wild night like a child, the same way I did. 

Perhaps it is that same rush of adrenalin that calls me now—older  than each of them at the time, at least by ten years—back to that movie time and time again. That calls me to exclaim "let's go dancing!" to whomever I happen to be watching with. Less often I disclose my intense craving for a smoke, not so much because it caresses some unfulfilled hole inside (it used to!), but because it looks so damn cool. That's the danger in movies for me. I know better, but my young body, my wishful, longing, Hollywood body, is still vulnerable to the tricks of the trade, which for memories such as this, had its place in the sun. Or the hot seventies night, as it were.

And that night was a dream. I vividly remember walking up Westwood Boulevard, heading toward the theatre just south of Wilshire on that late summer night. I bounced between Ma and Jay, decked in their best everyday disco clothes, me with the patched up satin pants, matching yellow shirt with orange satin star in the middle, disco's stamp on modern clothing. There was talk of dance moves and the coolest movie there was ever was. There was an unspoken ecstasy in the strut each of us walked up the city sidewalk that night, a smug understanding that we were the coolest people on earth, Ma and Jay looking fancy and fine with their Marlboro Reds dangling off their lips. 

The memory is encased in disco, sirens and night lights spiraling around me as we hustled in with the crowds just in time. We shared a huge tub of popcorn smothered in butter, large drinks, feet propped on the seats ahead of us. "Oh cool..." I said, as the opening credits unfolded over JT strutting those disco streets I craved so deeply in my young body, the momentum of cool. 

"Cool!" Ma echoed, and at that, I knew I was exactly where I needed to be. I belonged. And one thing I knew for sure, enhanced by the Bee Gees beat pounding with rhythm and momentum, the soundtrack to this forever night: I am special. For that night, I was part of the scene, among the adults with the world (and dance floor) at their feet. 

And that feeling lasted until disco had it's huge backlash a few years later. Things went downhill between me and Ma. Jay left. The eighties came. We learned to dance real lame. Poor John Travolta was exiled from the new wave. Friends and I TP'd houses all over the neighborhood, writing "disco sucks" in egg yolk and shaving cream all over LA's manicured lawns.

As I watched SNF again this past weekend, it occurred to me about that backlash. Why did everyone suddenly detest disco? I remember it being violent, the hatred, as though disco was some writhing disease in bell bottoms. And in the height of peer pressure, I went along with the hatred, agreeing to reject a deep part of myself in the face of Culture Club, aloofness, and androgyny. Running scared from myself in a feral city that broadcasted its utter hatred toward disco, I was reborn a depressed, motionless adolescent, never questioning the death of a pulsing era. Too young to understand at the time,  I can't help but wonder now where all that hatred came from. Why a seemingly good thing was shot down from the starry heavens, no longer cool, all dressed up in satin with nowhere to go. 


WRITE WITH ME?
Where were you the day (year? era?) the disco died? What are your disco days memories? Saturday Night Fever stories? 

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—I want you to show me...

If you're anywhere near my age you likely remember belting it out in the car, or cranking it up in your bedroom when no one was home, perhaps lying in bed, paralyzed by love's woozy grip, picturing yourself on a tropical island ("Blue Lagoon"?) in a saucy embrace... "I want to know what love is... I want you to show me... I want to feel what love is... I know you can show me..."

I had no way of knowing at the time—the time being 1984—as I rewound this "lame" song that no one my age admitted liking, over and over again, shortly after my boyfriend took me to the Rolling Stones concert and then broke my heart the next day. No way of knowing that thirty years later I would be singing that same song, only a spiritual "cover" version, with a room full of Bhakti yogis, eyes rolling back in their heads, arms stretched toward the heavens, just outside of Madison Wisconsin. Had you told me that at the time, in fact, I likely would have said you were mistaking my life for a David Lynch movie. Not so fast, young, tortured teenage, heartsick, Rox. Not so fast. You've got a lot to learn about love, yet.

Indeed life is a constant lesson in love, is it not? But that's what love looks like when you are 13 in Los Angeles in 1984.  And then it morphs and moves around and gets old and stays loyal here and disloyal there. And then we learn it isn't what we thought it is. And then we realize it's nothing at all like we hoped it was because it's much better, and bigger and all encompassing and includes everyone... And we learn about the Dalai Lama. And Thich Nhat Hanh and lovingkindness... and eventually we realize love's a verb not a noun or it's a state of mind or it's like that great book or movie or love song...well, all that and more. And then we are back where we started from: head over heals in love, lovestruck, lovesick, heartbroken, hopeful...until we are chanting "I wanna know what love is" with a bunch of Hind-Jews, many of them wearing turbans. 

All true, but what does all that look like? And what does that have to do with Foreigner? Well. Back to basics. Back to showing "what does that look like?" Why do I ask? Because love is the courier, the fuel of our stories, the ones we live, the ones we write. Not only are there people we love, but there are also things and places and mommies and daddies and summer camps and music...god, do we ever love music. And don't even get us started on our children. And pets... 

We can love these things in our lives and it shows. When we write, it's not enough to just say it (I mean it is, but you know what I'm saying); for us to love what, how, and who you love right along with you on the page, we've got to see what that looks like.

Here's what love looks like for me: Well...admittedly, chanting  alongside a bunch of yogis just outside of Madison Wisconsin on a beautiful summer day. Laughing blissfully, picturing myself doing this on a (very) regular basis, the image of Valley Girl me chanting words in Sanskrit, cowside, for turning out so far from the person I thought I ever would be.  

Love is writing around the table here at The Beach and reading something and when I look up everyone is looking at me that certain way, a few of them crying

Love is a student naming the Beach, the Beach. 

Love is Jude surrounding himself in his stuffed animals and putting his head on my shoulder when I read The Hobbit to him in his bed. It's also Jude unexpectedly taking my hand when we walk to the bus stop. 

Love is breathing into my heart. Love is breathing back-to-back with someone, feeling the rise and fall together. 

Love is falling into fits of hysterical laughter with Jude because the sound of soy milk pouring over the Cheerios at 6 am cracks us up.

Love is singing "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" with Debmama and Two Cute Face.

Love is my brother eulogizing my dad by remembering the story about a piece of property he had in the mountains, deciding whether or not he should sell it, wanting to keep it "so others had a place to go."

Love is Ma embellishing a Hallmark card with exclamation points and drawings on Jude's 8th birthday card.

Love is knowing someone so well you can predict their micromovements and mannerisms, before they even know they're coming.  

Love is yoga.

Gosh, I could go on because love is writing. Writing endlessly about what love looks like is love. Love is feeling the loops and dots and lines and curves that form words reflected in the shapes and breath of my body.

Okay, one more: 

Love is laughing at corny jokes like "Nine runs into a friend at the coop who doesn't recognize her because she looks like Six. So she says to the friend at the coop,  It's me! Nine! From yoga class!"

WRITE WITH ME? WHAT DOES LOVE LOOK LIKE FOR YOU, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW? "LOVE IS..."

PLEASE WRITE WITH ME AND SHARE. BUT EVEN IF YOU DON'T, I STILL LOVE YOU AND WISH YOU A VERY HAPPY, SWEET, HEART-CENTERED VALENTINE'S DAY. XOXO

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Oooooh, that's what it's all about...

For all the times I tell my students—the same way Stephen King told me in On Writing, the same way Thomas Lewis reminds me in A General Theory of Love—that most stories, above all else, are about relationships, I tend to forget this. I want to make stories about everything else: yoga, depression, Los Angeles, eating disorders, drumming, cigarettes, music, love, etc, etc... I want to make them bigger, flashier, up the stakes by giving them more places to go and more proof of their significance.

"If only I could describe that first time I shaped my body into Camel Pose in a way that really conveys that I went to another plane of reality...like a desert plane, where everything was blinding yellow, wide open and infinite..." I find myself musing on some mornings, clearly when I'm off on another plane of reality, thinking about the memoir I'll come back to someday. Yes, there is a memoir in progress. Yes, it's about LA and television and yoga and... well, a lot of things.

This morning I was talking to Dada, with whom we share the raising of one human experiment, currently in the form of an almost 8-year-old Jude. What we talk about when we talk about Jude is varied and celebratory, often addressing the logistics of raising him (as best we can) with consistent values and discipline from two separate houses. We do pretty well except for the occasional snag on screen time. Neither of us is too political or hysterical when it comes to the Matrix; it has more to do with preference: Dada loves making movies and doing stuff with technology. I am bored by it and prefer face-to-face over virtual. 

Still, occasional flare ups where I start to wonder "is he playing too many violent video games or watching too many scary movies?" result in Dada insisting there is "nothing to worry about," reminding me it's interactive, they play together, there is plenty of supervision, etc. And yet, you can take the girl out of LA, but you can't...

"But, Dada," I tell him, "remember what my memoir is about? It's about television ruining my life!" This gives us a both a laugh, me because I am citing my own unpublished memoir as evidence. Not that I don't make a good point: years of unsupervised TV and movie and music video watching while growing up in Los Angeles resulted in years of suffering, distorted thinking because I assumed TV was real, that I should tithe to the Hollywood gods to the point that I married a gay man because he—"we"— looked good. Ergo, I should've been happy, right?

"Your memoir isn't about television, it's about your mother, for Christ Sake," Dada says, reminding me how my mother insisted we watch the holocaust movies year after year and how they scared me to death. How I couldn't sleep at night when Ma was out on the town because I was afraid they were going to come get us, turn us into soap. 

Contrast that to the hours of "happily ever after" TV that came my way daily via The Brady Bunch, Heart to Heart, Facts of Life, Different Strokes, Fantasy Island, Punky Brewster... and I was one confused kid. 

When I went to Ma with these Hollywood spawn fears, she was not much help. "Could it still happen, Ma?" I said, following her around the kitchen while she crashed around in the junk drawer. After all, Ma knew best and most about all things. "Could it, Ma?"

"Who the fuck knows," she said, "it's possible. There are a lot of people out there who still hate Jews."

"But—"

"Now go outside and tell your fucking brother to get in here. Dinner's ready and I'm going to be late." She crushed Top Ramen noodles into the near boiling water, hurrying it along with a wooden spoon. 

"K! Can we eat in the living room?" Happy Days would be on soon.

"No. You'll make a fucking mess. Okay. Just don't make a fucking mess." 

Happy Days and Top Ramen, a little Sara Lee banana cake for dessert and things were looking up. Today, while it's still light, let there be dancing at Mel's; tonight I'll deal with the nazis!

How could I have forgotten? Without Ma, the journey we take together throughout the pages of my memoir, there is really no story. We are the momentum and the tension behind the entire thing. How will it "end" between us? What will I have to do for my own "happily ever after"?

Leave it to Dada to remind me of this. I picture he and Jude at the Red House, sword fighting or boxing on the Wei, before dissolving into a pile of boy laughter in the hammock. I picture Jude asking his dad if zombies are real, if they can do "stay up late night" again and have cereal for dinner. I picture Dada telling him about the zombies he has seen at work, that even though there are plenty of them, there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing to fear.

WRITE WITH ME? WHO AND WHAT IS YOUR MEMOIR ABOUT? 

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—The moment you knew

Recently a student told me that her favorite writer, Haruki Murakami, described the moment he knew he was destined to be a writer. My student described it far better than I could (or anyone else/anything I have found written about it), but the short answer is baseball. Not just baseball, mind you, but the lingering, sensory, amniotic, depth of it. Says Murakami,

"...The crack of the bat meeting ball on the sweet spot echoed through the stadium. Hilton easily rounded first base and pulled up to second. And it was at that exact moment that a thought struck me: You know what? I could try writing a novel. I can still remember the wide-open sky, the feel of the new grass, the satisfying crack of the bat. Something flew down from the sky at that instant, and whatever it was, I accepted it."

So, what is it about baseball anyway? I mean... is it everyone's muse?  What is it about this game that makes it the literary darling of ball sports? That's the first thing.

But the main thing, what I find so striking (no pun intended, really), is thinking about the exact moment when we knew we were writers. Not just the reasons why we write (which are great too, obviously), but the wordless collision of all perfection, the muse, the "I have to write this down" moment.

I agree. It's hard to pinpoint. It's elusive.

I knew it when I wrote my first short story in first grade about the color purple and could not stop writing. I also knew it when I wrote a letter from my 24 year-old self in the basement at my first counseling job in Seattle to my future self, living under sunny skies, far from here, reminding myself things would get better, to hang in there. 

I knew it every time I wrote a love letter. 

I knew it when Jude spoke his first word: "Bus!" I knew it the first time I heard that huge crystal singing bowl that Deb played that night at Lake Harriet among a small gathering of drummers, where suddenly I was among a hundred whales breathing me back into my body. 

I knew it six years later when Jude came running toward me—walk, trot, skip, ruuuuuuuuun!— across the green summer fields at Camp St Croix after five days at sleep-away camp. I knew it when I knew I could never ever put into words how long that sprint toward each other lasted and how very right that moment felt when he jumped up into in my arms.

Regretfully, I knew it with each heartbreak and I knew it when I was well aware I was doing the absolutely wrong thing at the wrong time and proceeded anyway. I knew it when I saw a young man carrying a clipboard run across six lanes of traffic before he was struck by a car, knocked onto the sidewalk and died in front of me on a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles a week before my first wedding. I knew it when I felt nothing at the height of celebration, when I felt everything when it was over, and when I felt the earth against my spine while laying in corpse pose at yoga.

I know it even when I have nothing to do with anything. When there is no I, no me, and amazingness is happening anyway.

I knew it and I know it each and every time I surrender. To music. To love. To the moment. To being wrong. Or right. When I laugh so hard I pee my pants and when I let someone else drive so I can enjoy the ride.

Oh, I could go on. I could mine deeper into this wordless world where I am endlessly moved by the earth's poetry, layer upon layer, where each of these moments reveals a brief window, an opening, a portal into everything at once, a oneness, a sense that I have absolutely been here before countless times and will be here again. Perhaps it takes me back to the womb, the wordless womb.

So why? Why do I have to write it down? Why not just leave the wordless alone? I do... most of the time. But each time I attempt to translate the wordless collision, I am giving back to the writers and musicians and all whoeverybodys who have understood me, translated for me. Because of their gifts, the sharing of their stories, I can celebrate, embrace, and worship this one life, navigate and belong here, at times tolerate, occasionally just get by in, and once in a blue moon want out of this life, well knowing it will all pass and that I am exactly where I am meant to be. 

And that's a moment to write down.


WRITE WITH ME?
AT WHICH MOMENT DID YOU KNOW YOU HAD TO WRITE IT DOWN?

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—It's just writing

READERS! THIS WEEK I AM PLAGIARIZING MYSELF FROM A BLOG POST I DID RECENTLY FOR THE LOFT TO PROMOTE MY UPCOMING HEALING MEMOIR CLASS! READ ON FOR MY "PROFESSIONAL" TAKE ON WRITING YOUR TRUTH! ENJOY! 

If I could get a nickel for every time a student brought up the topic of, “but what if someone reads this and doesn’t agree? Will they sue me? Will I lose my home? What if it’s too self-indulgent? Will everyone be mad at me?” I’d be rich—well, less of a starving artist anyway.

The truth is, for now it’s just writing. What others think is something to consider—later. But for now, it’s just writing.

It might sound simple, but many struggle to “just write” a single word, let alone a paragraph on the page when considering writing true stories, or heck, writing an email for that matter. It’s not that we don’t have ideas and passions—we’ve all got enough material to fill volumes. It’s that our busy, thinking, judging, worrying minds get to the page quicker than our hearts, running over our truth with panic: “What if no one wants to hear about this? What if someone gets hurt? What if I’m making this up? What if I am not sounding writerly enough? What if? What if? What if?”

Sadly, this fear shuts down the creative flow, drowning out your natural voice to the point where you have no idea what and why you wanted to write in the first place.

You’re not hurting anyone or asking for a lawsuit simply by writing your truth. This is a hard thing to trust for many students; they hesitate to get started because they feel the very act of writing is going to get them in big trouble. There seems to be a collective guilt about writing (let alone publishing) memoir these days, a sense that, by nature, writing creative nonfiction is incriminating.

What if I don’t say it right? What if I hurt someone? What if I spell it wrong?

Still, these questions come up all the time and public opinion is a valid concern. To soften the struggle a bit, I always come back to the same two questions when teaching Healing Memoir (or just about anything, really): What is your intention? What are you afraid of?

Intention is simple: “I am writing this memoir because…” Along those lines, “What are you hoping to share and teach your readers by writing your memoir? What is the one thing, the one gift you hope readers walk away with after reading your memoir?”

Chances are you began writing just to get something out of your body, to heal something, let something go. Later, if and when you think about publishing, chances are, your intention is clean and loving. None of us really wants to hurt anyone or make problems for relatives or get back at anyone who didn’t love us enough. Likely, you want to benefit others, help others heal something that you have lived through. Perhaps your intention is to make someone laugh or embrace yoga or overcome trauma.

On the other hand, your intention could be to bust someone or get back at them. You might be writing for revenge. Whatever your intention, there’s no good or bad, right or wrong. You’re just writing. You can decide later how you want to sound when you publish: loving or angry. You can bust someone lovingly and it will end up okay. However, a loving intention typically, like in the movies, wins readers over. No one wants to root for you if you are still pissed off at your first husband and it’s still ruining your life. We’re more apt to root for you if you heal through the grief and then make your life better. If your intention is loving, even the most questionable characters will end up beloved by readers. And especially you.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t be mindful of how others might receive your published memoir/personal essay/article/etc. When I write about friends and family on my blog or in articles, I have to ask myself how they will feel being revealed doing or saying something—however silly or mundane—in the middle of a story. Most of the time, it is celebratory and makes them feel good. My intention is always loving.

Fear is a bit more challenging. Asking, “What am I so afraid of? What is the worst thing that can happen?” are good questions to linger with.

For these purposes there’s a writing exercise I like to do. Imagine your book is done and published and shining in bookstore windows and cyber windows across the galaxy. Imagine the person you most fear reading it picks it up, reads it cover to cover. Then they sit down and write you a letter. Write that letter in their voice… “Dear Rox...I never threw you and Lisa out of the f***ing car at the Santa Monica Pier and told you f***ers to walk home!"

Chances are it’s not as bad as you think. Even if it is, what are you going to do about that? Is it their anger? Is it still yours to carry? Does it really matter if your truth does not match theirs? Typically, these issues can be sorted out and certainly worked through on the page so your story honors your intention.

But on a deeper level—deeper than the fear of what others might think or say or do and judge—often times the deeper fear is facing one’s own truth. In all its “ugliness.” The truth even you don’t want to think about, that you may have forgotten or pushed to the depths. The irony is that this deep fear is a great gift—it is the life force, the prana, the juju, of your memoir, not to mention the weight you’ve been aching to lift from your life. Once you allow for that truth to come to the surface, you can make peace with it. And if you can make peace with that deep fear on and off the page, you will have a very lively memoir where everyone (friends, family, and readers) is rooting for you to unveil the truth you’ve been holding on to for way too long and get on with the business of living a whole life. Making darkness into healing light. It’s your typical hero’s journey. Everyone’s journey.

But first, it’s just writing.

WRITE WITH ME? 

WHAT IS YOUR WRITING INTENTION?

WHAT WOULD YOUR LETTER TO YOU SAY?

WHAT TRUTHS MIGHT YOU BE AVOIDING ON AND OFF THE PAGE?

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Year End Celebrations

When I first moved here in 2001, I had a handful of bylines to my name, but no idea where I was heading as a writer. I could have never predicted where I am today and if I saw it coming I would have been really confused. At the time, I was hoping to write a bestselling memoir or collection of essays (what we now call Creative Nonfiction and/or Personal Essay) based on my "dysfunctional" (I actually touted "dysfunctional" as though it would be a selling point) upbringing in Los Angeles. All of this, before yoga. 

Of course I can't attribute everything to yoga. First of all, there's the University of Minnesota for accepting me into the MFA program in the first place. Somehow they saw past the "dysfunction" and admitted me into their program in 2001. To this day (and still), I am ever grateful to the Minnesota literary (and illiterary) communities and folks who welcomed me so openly (if not somewhat Minnesotanly) into the books and pages of their lives. 

Today one of my students asked me why I don't do much freelancing anymore. Ooooooh, long story, I may have said. The short answer? Oooooh, I used to be a freelancing whore. Well now, let's not go...

True, once upon a time while I went through the MFA program at the U,  in addition to writing columns for the Minnesota Daily, I was very fortunate to connect with some local publications and eventually began writing for most of them, namely writing monthly columns for Minneapolis St Paul Magazine, with the occasional interview or feature. To those publications I am also very grateful! They put up with me. And I mean that. 

But I was a freelance addict, meaning I took and went after every gig I could get my young big-headed opinion over. Long before I was a legal resident, I learned there are advantages to not being a native Minnesotan when it comes to going after things one wants. For the first and last time, Minnesota Nice worked in my favor. (I suffered aplenty at its cause, you can trust me on that!)

Still, I was cocky, I was young, I was a hoarder, I was afraid of not being important or loved, etc... I look back on some of the things they printed and I go... Oooooh, shit. Really? Really? But then I remember me back then and try to have compassion. 

Try. I said I try.

Although I've veered from freelancing, one of the greatest things about it was I got to share my values, beliefs, and quirky passions with mainstream culture. Despite my cluelessness and want for fame and fortune, I wrote from a place of love. My monthly Top Tens column featured ten, "best" anythings based on any given topic of my choosing: Best places to make out while riding your bike, best pick up games, "inappropriate" public art, unsung heroes, cover bands, candy in bulk, folks who defy Minnesota Nice...  

I'm trying. I'm trying.

I don't miss the deadlines and line checks, the word count, the irony, and all the stuff that goes with regular freelance work, but occasionally I get nostalgic for sharing the things out there I think are really cool. Granted I don't get "out there" nearly as much as I used to, nor am I as savvy to the old hipster ways (thankfully, gratefully), but I don't know if that would change anything anyway. In any case, here are the things and people that make my life wonderful and I cannot live without: (And you have likely heard me talk about all of these things regularly, but now I am going on being cocky again and overtooting my welcome, so just bare with me)... 

First of all, you, students, readers, friends, like-hearted and minded kindred soul mates who come and make The Beach such a sacred place. Thank you. Thank you so much. Happy New Year. What a blessing that my life happens to be happening and weaving at the same exact moment as yours, that we found each other. It's a miracle and I am grateful. Terry Tempest Williams has an awesome line in her piece "Why I Write" about how writing is like "whispering into the ear of someone you love..." As I write this, my wish is for all my writing family, each of you, to hear these words whispered into your ear, as yours and yours alone...  You'll try? 
The "strangers" out there I will come to know and share and write with and love when the time is right
Studio Inside Out is brilliant! Oh to live in the colors! Meet your brilliant on the canvas! Guided by pure love...
BareBones Halloween Show is something you hear me talk about all the time
MayDay Parade ditto
Amy Pate—My one and only yoga teacher, a true light...at One Yoga Studio.
Wild Moon Bhaktas and Kirtan Path if you ever want to chant and be happy.
Yogananda Center
Common Ground
Dharma Field
One Yoga
Invisible Bee Yoga
All places and beings teaching and being peace
Milissa Link
Lovingkindness 
The Sun Magazine
The New Yorker
Viva Mexico who get me there every year
ARC on Penn for having clothes every Sunday for $1 and thereby keeping me and my son warm and overdressed year round.
Latest find on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLERRYp8Oao
Favorite Parrot Totally random, but god, I love her. You have to watch the whole thing.
Jessica O who is one of my bff's, the original mother earth who teaches me how and why to love the planet and it's children and who is taking her 7 year old son to meet his dad for the first time in Japan this spring
Hot Chocolate at Caribou after x-country skiing at Hyland Park... that there is a two-for-one
Best Drum Circle
The man who taught me to drum and so much more
Omulu Capoeira is where Jude occasionally gets his kicks. One of these days, I'll join him!
Curran's so odd it's not even a dive, but I am in earnest ever grateful to them for providing weekly dinners of pancakes and chocolate chip cookies to my son and his dad
Cary Tenis I still cannot say enough things about this amazing writer, human, and being of peace.
That's not the end. Just where I am having to stop for now. 
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! 

WRITE WITH ME? WHAT CAN YOU ADD TO THIS LIST? PEOPLE? PLACES? EDIBLES? SPIRITUALS? ALL IN ONE?

AND IF YOU'D RATHER:
 "NEW YEAR'S EVE"... ANYTHING ON THAT. ANYTHING.

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—And what I really want...

Permanently clean floors
a winter cabin in Encinitas, California
an aversion to sugar
more time
fewer hormones to deal with
a hugging shop (remember House of Hugs?)
skate skis
contentment with wanting and not having
sweet music piped into my condo every time a baby is born

a functional backpack purse. I really want a functional, simple, good quality, cute, purse.
100 dresses and boots that fit just perfectly so I never have to shop for them again.

daily massage from my amazing massage therapist
a hot tub
soft slippers
better feet
better hair
glitter and stardust to accentuate my hair and cheeks at the just the right moment
a yoga studio to move in downstairs
a vegetable garden
a lemon tree
a cat
a dog
a parrot
a sitar
a big drum
a piano

romance, always more romance

I want to be carried when I'm tired.
I want to be kissed on a perfect summer evening, whirled and twirled on a gentle, snowy night.
I want to dance and sing all night long.

a gargantuan family to go to on the holidays with lots of kids and family and music making and healthy food and cooking and merry making in a gargantuan house with high ceilings and dancing and a skylight and a piano and heck...you might as well throw in some ghosts because this is sounding a lot like the haunted mansion ride at Disneyland where everyone is having a big party

speaking of ghosts, bringing my dad back for a day

for Jude to never grow older
a younger body to make more children
to remember my dreams more often
to fly

a long table down on the the street, right here on 50th and Xerxes that sits about 100 people (and as long as across the world) who never met and never thought they would all gather and write together and realize how much they have in common and love each other

a new bike

lovingkindness
for everyone to know the love in their hearts

more time
more time
more time

to be here now
in wishing
in the gift giving that life breathes
in and out
every moment

WRITE WITH ME?
WHAT DO YOU REALLY REALLY WANT? WHAT'S ON YOUR LIST? 

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Pop-Up Stories: Keeping it simple

I have a student who has been writing with me since my first class at the Loft back in 2005. The class was called "Creative Workout," where I had students do all sorts of "creative" endeavors in and outside the classroom in order to work the inherent creative muscle and maybe get some writing out of the deal. It's vague, but memories I have include students running around the room as their toddler selves, drumming out their feelings on the table, and trying out something new and a bit risky out in their community and then writing about it. I had a lot of nerve. D likes to tell the story repeatedly about how much she didn't like me back then, how she thought I was out of my mind. Who did I think I was teaching writing, what with my flaky west coast ways, drumming and rhyming games that I often  I used to teach poetry. Where did I think I was, the beach? Was this some sort of commune free-for-all love-in or was it a writing class? 

Well, turns out, I grow on a person, or as D would say, "you wear on a person."  Over the years we have written together privately and in my Friday Women's group, where she has gone from writing one page poems about her porch to epic personal essays in creative nonfiction about everything from running a discotheque with her husband in 1970s Minneapolis by night, teaching kindergarten by day, to "D + G Stories," which account for the daily mishaps that happen in a marriage, like butt-bumping in the kitchen when there isn't enough room for both of you. No matter what she writes about, she always wants more writing time, always returning to the table with a longing to write "because I love to write."

Together we have invented new forms of poetry (candy poems, yoga poems, etc), loving the simple permission we gave one  another to make poetry out of just about anything. Together we have taken a walk to the corner on a hot summer day, hugged a tree, and returned to write about it. There are many memories, many stories. One day out of the blue she started writing erotica. Where did it come from? Who knew? It just showed up. And man, was it ever good. And it just kept on pouring out of her, endlessly.   We later discovered she was on a healing journey, beginning, as she says, "to write the trauma out of my body." 

About this I could go on and on. But not today.

One of the things I love so much about D is her tendency to rebel against my writing prompts. Each and every Friday when we write together, she will either flat out refuse my prompt or she will  twist it into something much better. When I first started my blog, she went on about the lunacy of starting a "bog." When I proposed we all write some "spoken word," well, in classic form, D created a powerful piece of "open word," which I like a lot, lot better. And last week when I suggested we all write our memories of what had happened since we wrote together last, encouraging them to "write whatever pops into your mind and go with it because it will reveal important themes and energy..." she aptly named the exercise "pop-up stories." No beating around the bush there. Spoken like a true kindergarten teacher. 

It is this simple and fresh twist on the everyday seriousness of adult speaking and thinking that I find so refreshing about her and her writing. It is her way of questioning, mindfully looking at the world, the moment. Having a little poetic fun with it. In fact, within this twist, this space of interpretation (misinterpretation, translation, reaction, etc) between what is and what we do and write with it, where your true writer's voice lives, the unique you-ness.

Oh, I could tell your reasons why this woman struggles with this, why she insists she is not a writer, why she cries out in frustration when she can't come up with fancier, more "writerly" words and ideas. But, no, I tell her, please don't! Please stay with you and your unique voice which is so original and fresh. It's what makes you a poet! Please don't go trying to sound like Jenny, whose writerly job is to sound like Jenny, not you! Please try not to  compare! Stay with your unique voice, your truth, and from there you can write about anything. Plus, it's a lot easier that way. 

That's the beauty of having so many writers. We could all be writing about the same moment and it would sound like symphony. 

WRITE WITH ME? How does your unique voice and you-ness interpret the world? The moment? 

What part of your voice and you-ness do you struggle to accept? What part do you love and embrace?

And Another...

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—It's just another perfect day...

Beverly Boulevard!

We love it!

Finding a clam!

Greetings from the Hometown! Some photos as promised... More to come. Enjoying the sun, the food, the flowers and trees... not enjoying the traffic, the leaf blowers, the drama!!! Off to to Venice Beach... So far my highlight: Yesterday my cousin and Godmother who is 93 says, over lunch at Canter's Deli, "Happiness is an inside job." Love to you all, Rox 

Santa Monica Pier! 

We love it!

Remember the Randy Newman Song? We love it! We love LA!

Ma

We love it!

Just another perfect day!

Canter's Deli!

CBS where I once watched them film Young and the Restless

My first job...

Write with me? Do you love LA? LA Story?

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—I'M Grateful for YouTube

I don't watch TV. I don't do Facebook. But hot damn, I love YouTube.

I love the funny cat bloopers. I love the interviews with actors and musicians from my childhood, the obscure clips from the Love Boat or Z Channel. And god knows, I love those 80s videos. I love that I can YouTube my childhood summer camp, go back in time to a simpler place, long before personal video cameras were on anyone's radar.  I love that I can join a kirtan any time of the day, practice yoga with Saul David Raye, learn to play the ukulele (or sousaphone for that matter), brush up on my tap dancing, learn Arabic, attempt origami, prepare pompous pastries (or pom-poms if I dare!) make my own drum if I so choose, make my own feature film, be read to by famous poets, sang to by long gone musicians, welcomed into communities (and living rooms) just about anywhere.  Not to mention, if I look hard enough, I know I can find myself doing something rather silly out there in Bhaktiland, but why bother with that? I've been there!

I'd rather travel timelessly, across the planet to gape at wild animals, to ski the alps, to bathe in Kawaiian waterfalls, dance with Fred Astaire, run with wildfire, remember the Santa Anna's, blow with the soft spring breeze in Palm Canyon. I'd much rather go back to that stretch of Oregon I biked with my dad in the early 90s, round the long green bend we did that one summer afternoon. I'd rather bike around the world, in fact. 

Heck, I'd rather fly a plane, chase a train, stop the rain... all possible in the Seusville that YouTube has become.


Of course I can go somewhere really dark with an intro like that. I can talk about how even though we  have such a cool thing—that we can go anywhere, anytime with a simple click—we are lonelier now than ever before. We are isolated in our abundance. 

But no, I won't go there. Not today. 

Because what I really love about YouTube are the helpful tips that folks are putting out there, free of charge, where the shiny human spirit comes blazing through, all the better when it comes blazing through someone's tacky, unkept, dusty, one-bedroom apartment, where cats or wild children or drunken uncles are coming in and out of the frame wily-nily. More and more, this is what I seek out in YouTube: the unedited, raw, human condition that has nothing to do with show business or sparkly anything put on.

In fact, my YT du-go-to usually takes me to someone's dining room or kitchen in a town I've never heard of. Year after year I find myself searching for DIY fixes or projects, my version of cyber thrift shopping or better yet, the matrix free-for-all.  Just yesterday in fact, like every winter when my skin begins to turn a rougher shade of reptile, I began the search for a homemade humidifier, given the ten I have cost a lot to run, don't last long, don't really work, and are generally a pain in the ass. I'm convinced that SOMEONE out there has an easier solution, fully aware that YouTube has perhaps warped my psychology in this way. But can you blame me? No sooner than I type in "DIY humidifiers," pages upon pages load with everything from bomb lookalikes to model airplanes coming at me in multiple languages.

I'm not saying it's all good. Overwhelm sets in rather quickly.

Just about to give up,  I come across a man who talks to me like the two year old I am... "First you take a bowl..." He pulls one of those cheapie ceramic-platstic (cerastic? plastamic?) Target type bowls out of his dark wooded cupboard, demonstrating, in case we don't know how to work our own cupboards. "Next, you take the bowl and set it on the counter." He does. Meanwhile, all we see of this man is his Buddha belly and his arm with the occasional profile working diligently in the same apartment kitchen we have all seen in our lives; I know I've lived in many apartments with that same kitchen. (And if you are not sure where this prompt is going, take "apartments;" there's a goldmine of prompts in that one!).

Well this is getting interesting. I wonder where this is going. I'm tracking so far. 

"Then you take your bowl and fill it with water." Okay. I can do that. But he demos just in case. "And there it is. That's your homemade humidifier." You can put it just about anywhere, he tells us. And for better results you could put it atop or next to your radiator. 

Of course, failing that,  you could always do the old reliable humidifier thing, he says.

Old reliable—?

You could just take a wet towel and hang it up. 

Well, I'd be lying to you if I said I didn't try them both. 

From there, things get a bit more complicated, but I won't spoil the surprise; let's just say a coat hanger is brought into the frame and leave it at that. Oh, and "surface area" is mentioned quite a few times.

Why am I so endeared to these videos? Is it the raw truth of the "characters" we are seeing? The good will nature of it? The reminder that life a'int so bad because good folks are out there helping us save money and heartache, not for self promotion, but out of their own good hearts?

I suppose I oughta pay if forward and make a little Writing with Rox You Tube vid of my own; would you watch it? Maybe I'll send it to the humidifier guy as a little token of thanks.


WRITE WITH ME?
WHICH YOU TUBE VIDEO ARE YOU MOST GRATEFUL FOR?
IF YOU MADE ONE, WHAT WOULD IT BE? WOULD YOU EVER MAKE ONE? 
FAILING THAT: "APARTMENTS." GO!