I'm Here

Languishing in the longing, Living with anticipation of loving.

*For your generative enjoyment… listen to The Essential David Bowie while reading.

Determined to introduce myself by the life of the full moon. Not just any full moon, the specific full moon happening now, in broad daylight. Beyond the saturation point, consumed by consumption even — not the disease of times past, but that late-stage-capitalism kind of consumerism brought to you by digital detritus. For any of you who subscribed ages ago and are scratching your head, ‘what took so long?’ or ‘wow, there are so many of these things I hadn’t noticed’— here we go!

So, I’m 54 years of age — the standard ‘years-old’ frame doesn’t fit. And whether it’s astrology or internal family systems you subscribe to — Substack plug, my goal is to create some things here that you unabashedly want to subscribe to! The promise being that me overthinking, poking, and prodding will result in the vulnerability fueled transformative creativity that opens portals to awe and joy with care and love. Trite? Corny? Then it’s not for you. Before you leave, take a poke around inside whatever it is that has you convinced there is anything of value without the capacity for awe, joy, care, and love.

The view from Cliff Acre, my annual trek to Wales for refreshment and renewal

Thank you for staying through my TedTalk — any message I share here is always, all ways, a message I’m working on choking down myself first. I’m here in the SStacks to carve out a space for sharing. A solo parent, single mom of multiple cultural descendants; a writer who grew up queer in what has been called the hood for as long as I’ve been around. I’ve resided in proximity to redwoods for more than a decade, but being a pale-skinned Californian American means that child of the mean streets remains my primary frame for processing whatever world I’m in. Whichever of my identifiers you relate to or find yourself curious about, I offer each of them as a point of departure in no particular order, unweighted, and without hierarchy.

My vision for It’s Wonderful Being a Girl is a place for processing, purging, and plowing new neural-pathways. I don’t believe we have to surrender our physical vessel for reincarnation to be possible. Throughout, I’ll be referencing and reviewing my childhood as a troubled kid who would have felt much less alone had my world included people with capacity to connect and care beyond survival. Would conversations about awareness, anxiety, and alliteration have made a difference? Maybe not. As they like to say, it was the 70s, 80s, and 90s…If tales influenced by Harriet the Spy, The Boxcar Children, or Calle Sesamo, the Electric Company, and Soul Train are your jam, welcome! If you want to know how Marilyn Monroe, Pamela Anderson, and Dolly Parton show up in plot lines woven through Coach Carter, Thirteen, Sherry Baby, Airplane, SMILF, À Bout de Souffle, El Ángel Exterminador, Goodfellas, the Big Lebowski, and 8 Mile, then stay tuned.

I’m painfully aware of the sand remaining in my hourglass — the specific number of grains is not mine to know. I’m here at midlife to make the most of the meh, maybe, and mighty I’m finding myself mired or marveling in on any given day. I’m calling it ‘Dear X’ to put use to an epistolary device in dedication to my dearest darling daredevil daughter, utilizing the mode of an extended ode to wee generation that coulda, woulda, shoulda, and still might — Gen X. It’s my effort here to undo the hyper vigilance that keeps on reminding me that it is an outdated and antiquated safety strategy. Bonus points for me, I’m finding a whole somatic response AKA adrenaline rush in building the courage to share words that may or may not land, that aren’t for everybody, and have a big old chance of reaching nobody. Woot!

My adolescence was Skipper’s wild ride desperately seeking something. Today I’m here, on another side of this thing called life carving, out space via time and what too often feels like what D. Muthulingam called ‘digital sharecropping’ to build the audience that will someday legitimize my life’s experiences in writing. And perhaps gain me access beyond the slim gates of publicly traded bookbindery, granting me the good news of publication. You’ll find me writing about the Ages, Sages, and Wages; the Ch-ch-ch-chch-ch-choices I’ve had the honor and horror of making. And if the scary/greedy/sadistic skin-sacks who insist on exerting their will over the big bountiful ball we’re hurtling through the cosmos on — the stories I share will eventually be a secret print document, soiled and sewn on whatever the kids can source, as a look back on the bold days of old.