I fell in love with you even more tonight...

...as I sat at the small table in the hip cafe of the anti-mall with my two friends staring lovingly back at me as we talked about everything, as we talked about us...

...as I walked down to the pandería this afternoon to get a sugary drink and realized I live in the blocks on Mariposa between Wilshire and 8th and you had found it on Google maps, with the McDonald's and RadioShack nearby...

...as Julia and I drove Grace out into the city for the first time, Josh Ritter's "Come and Find Me" playing on the stereo, and found there is a street just a few blocks parallel to here by the name of "Alexandria" and only if there was one less "i" in it, it would be a whole street dedicated to you, so close to me...

I fell in love with you even more tonight...

...as we drove beneath the beautiful looping of overpasses and freeways near downtown LA and Julia said they looked futuristic and I thought they looked like dinosaurs and she said she wanted to go the Natural History Museum and I thought I could take you there...

...as I thought of writing you love letters and sweet emails and how you get me and how we understand each other and how each time I write something I feel in a space so intimate it's as if you were curled up next to me...

...as I came back to the apartment tonight, took a deep breath as I entered the door and thought yeah, this could be home, at least for a while, at least with these bright colors...

I fell in love with you even more tonight...

...as I know that writing this to you tonight will make me fall that much more in love with you, and knowing you'll receive it when you wake in the morning will bring a smile to your face, and that that will be enough to make me rise in the morning and peer out my bathroom window at the sunshine and the smog and the skyscrapers and be so glad to be alive with you...

Turkeybasters

Have you ever imagined your mother's turkey baster coming at your vagina to impregnate you?

It's simultaneously the scariest and most hilarious picture I've ever had.

Learning to SLOW down...

My good friend Clare joked at the end of January that it took a blizzard to get me to slow down and take care of myself. I laughed because it was funny; it was also true.

I was caught in Portland, Oregon, by snow and rain storms hitting the West Coast at all elevations, on every highway between me and my next destination--San Francisco International Airport. I was jet lagged, having just gotten back to American soil from three weeks in Thailand, and needing to make my next flight--this time to Dublin, Ireland, for another three week stay. Not sleeping, being potentially sick and without the energy to drive five hours, put on chains in the heavy falling snow, and get over the first mammoth of a mountain pass to my Yreka home was just something that was not going to happen.

So, I postponed my flight, waited for the weather to clear, and when I hit the Siskiyou Pass four days later, the road was bone dry.

My new flight time three days away, my dad and I watched the weather and timed the break in the storm again. My drive from Yreka to Santa Cruz (where I would leave my car, Grace, and all my personal belongings during my holiday) was clear. The only startle I had on the drive was light rain through the Bay Area, where part of the road was a bit slick and I got an idea of how quickly I could potentially lose control of my beautiful blue car. All was fine though and my flight to Ireland was fortunately rather empty, allowing me a whole row to myself to sleep.

Fast-forward through the most amazing holiday I've ever had in beautiful seaside towns and it brings me to this weekend when, after I've arrived safely back to the US of A, I am making my next journey--moving to Los Angeles.

Jet-lagged again. Sleepy again. Impatient to get where I need to be--again. And I still haven't made it to LA.

Rewind. My second year of university at UC Santa Cruz was a crazy, stressful year. It was a year filled with some of the most amazing projects and people I have been blessed to encounter. It also was the year I dealt with the most health problems--waking up with stomach aches every morning, heart burn, signs of a pancreatic infection, head colds, a bum wrist. All of it culminated the last week of the school year and the first week of summer when I found out I had mono, and was laid up for the next two months recovering.

My mom and family and good friends took great care of me that summer, making sure I would be strong enough and healthy enough to make it for my next big adventure: studying abroad in Galway, Ireland.

I did make it and to say that I had a wonderful time would be a gross understatement. Coupled with my experiences abroad, the I'm-in-another-country/continent/culture-and-all-that-entails bit, was me learning how to listen--and take care of--my body. I began to the symptoms my body produced when it was too stressed and how to step back and relax. I put distance between me and the intense focus I had been giving my schoolwork, benefiting all of my endeavors.

See what I learned from that second year and that following summer was that I needed to slow down a bit, take things easier and be aware of where and how much of my energy was being given. How to put a little sass back into my life again.

But as I find myself having to remind myself to relax, take it easy, enjoy the extra time given me in the wonderful beautiful place that is Santa Cruz, I keep asking what is it exactly that am I slowing down from? There are no obligations I have to attend to. I've only got plans to fulfill and really, I've already done most of the back work and am just waiting anyway.

My good friend Julia said to me the other day that maybe the universe is telling me I'm needing to slow down and understand that everything unfolds as it needs to, or something along those lines. And I do agree with that idea; you can't force something or make something happen until it's gonna happen. But at what point does the car stall when you've done all your down-shifting and laying off the gas?

For lovers who go unnamed

There is a story in Ruthann Robson's collection Cecile called "Theories of Men" that follows the narrator, Cecile's lover and partner, into the classroom of her feminist coursework at what one could presume to be Mills College. Here she struggles with the assigned theories--some written by men the way that men have always written theory and some, even more frustratingly, written by women the way that men have always written theory. She struggles to find theories that can explain her existence--as a lower-class woman, as a mother, as a lesbian-- and to find a place in the classroom--as a mature student, as a native of Florida, as a lesbian. The story comes to its revelation with the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, whose epicenter was just 10 miles north of Santa Cruz.

As the narrator describes the aftermath and the emotions she experiences, she singles out a particular part of the news report that strikes even more close to home. The narrator describes a young woman calling out to rescue workers to save her friend from a collapsed building in downtown Santa Cruz, calling over and over to them to save her. The narrator states quite solemnly that the woman on the news program does not actually mean "friend" when she calls out to the rescue workers, she means "lover."

I read Cecile this fall, with my lover curled into me, for coursework I designed for myself. Every two weeks I would read something new and show up at Bettina's office ready to discuss something about the work. Over the weeks I read Cecile, I decided I wanted to discuss the story "Theories of Men." It had resonated deeply with me and what I didn't know, but should have expected, was that Bettina already knew the story, but knew it in the context of Santa Cruz instead.

She told me the woman caught under the collapsed building was the lover of woman who called out to save her, and she was also the owner of the cafe the building had housed. When the earthquake had struck, the woman had run back into the building to clear everyone out, saving them, and had gotten trapped herself. The building was deemed too dangerous to continue rescue operations and her lover's cries were in vain. She told me the building had stood at the end of Pacific Ave and the lot had not been built upon since, a foundational hole in the ground with chain-link fence guarding it.

Today there is an additional chain-link fence around the lot and a large sign that advertises the new apartments to come in that valuable downtown prime location--but it does not say anything about what used to be there, why it isn't any longer and it does not tell the story of the friend who was really a lover.

But today there are also two deep-red roses, with their stems wrapped around each other; today they are woven into the fence, together; today there are roses for the past and for the future, for you and for her.

Kitsch, My Favorite Nickname

I had a summer fling once who liked to give me nicknames. Not in a weird, kinky, condescending kind of way, I just seemed to inspire them, so to speak. Like one day he looked up at the "Y" shaped scar on my forehead, focusing only on the slanting right half of it, and declared I should also be called "Tilda," like the accent mark you see written above vowels in other languages.

And I didn't mind this process of renaming. Growing up, I didn't really have nicknames. It's hard to shorten "Erica" to anything except "Er" (pronounced "Air") and despite my blondness, the name didn't fit. "e" came later, but only through my love affair with e.e. cummings' flair for making the lower case "e" look so damn good; and a few of my friends deciding that really, it was just a good letter for me.

The one name he really liked to call me though was "Kitsch." I'm not sure he knew the word before he met me, but as he saw me half unpacked, holding my beloved "jar o' kitsch," I think I shaped his understanding of it. It was cute and quirky and with that edge of sexiness that makes you want to see what it tastes like, so I let him call me "Kitsch."

I mean, he had good reason too--each surface I touched had that tacky sentimentality to it that I love--and when I got my first car that same summer, I made sure to "kitsch" it out. Stickers were bought and found; a pukka shell necklace, given to me by my great-grandmother for being a good driver, was wound around the shifter; graduation cords and sashes adorned seats and rear windows accompanied by various plastic sea toys; "Buddha Bouncer" was given his rightful protective place in the center console; and I pinned my Heather lapel from my father next to my driver's side light. Thus in this way, not only would my car reflect my personality, it would also be well protected.

And today of all days, I can't help but think that my collection of kitsch might be working to keep me safe somehow. The rain was pouring down hard on Highway 1 South between Ocean and Morissey and I could have spun across two lanes of traffic and been struck sideways when I hydroplaned; I could have flipped over and smashed completely against the median instead of just tapping it with my wheels; all of my belongings could have been strewn across the highway instead of just part of my back bumper; and I might not be sitting on my friend's futon right now, taking it easy.

And when I realized the rather minimal damage for what could have been a totaled vehicle, I wanted to kiss each and every piece of kitsch in that car. I wanted to run my finger along Buddha's head and say thank you; I wanted to brush my hand against the shells and think of my great-grandmother; I wanted to play with the toys and straighten the sashes.

Sitting in my car, I took in a deep breath and with that breath did all of those things without moving, and my fingers found the carved marble rubbing stone my father had made me, hanging around my neck on a string of leather, and was thankful for the love in each and every piece of my own personal kitsch.

So the next time anyone asks why it is I might actually like being nicknamed after unworthy, tacky sentimental art, I think I'll just reply, "Hey man, kitsch is powerful stuff."