What Have You Been Learning Lately?

DTLA is cute even when it's grey It's grey in LA and I'm holed up with one of my best and oldest friends listening to  rainy day music  and being creative. Prior to leaving New York a few weeks ago, I was experiencing terrible FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). New York doesn't care if you're there or not! New York is going to continue being a thrilling, interesting place. New York waits for no man. In all my lamenting about missing out, my friend Mary told me that I needed to have JOMO...the Joy Of Missing Out on winter in New York and everything unpleasant about being in the city that never stops yelling. After walking around LA in the sun without a jacket or boots, I'm happy to report that my FOMO has been replaced by JOMO. I love you, New York. See you in April! Trans America Returning to San Francisco was a strange experience. Several people warned me to expect the changes that have evolved the city so rapidly. SFO was my return ticket at the end of ever...

The journey is the sacred place. Last week I applied for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Global Entry program. The background check paperwork requested my addresses for the last five years, which amounted to eight homes in five cities and two states. This doesn't even factor in the couches, floors, hotel rooms, camp grounds, yoga studios, goddess dens, buses, trains and planes where I've lived life since commencing Project Wild Freedom. When I started this blog five years ago , I initiated with a meditation on Letting Go. I had just moved out of my beloved San Francisco Tenderloin oasis, to date the longest I've held an address in the last 13 years. I wrote about a sense of mourning to be closing that happy, stable chapter and shedding so much physical history. It's unimaginable that I used to have so much stuff! When I moved out of that apartment, I got rid of half of what I owned. When I left LA a few years later, I got rid of everything else, save...

Thoughts of him are hardly present anymore in my waking life, but last night he crept into my dream life again after awhile away. I awoke thinking about the way we allocate our attention. In yoga, we say that energy flows where attention goes, but what happens when that energy arrives where it's going? How is it received? For years I payed an enormous amount of attention to him and he had very little to offer in return. He didn't see my attention as a gift, or an invitation to deeper intimacy. Or perhaps he did. I don't really know. In any case, however he perceived what I offered, what was returned didn't match. I wanted to pour an ocean of love into him and he didn't want to get his hair wet. I battled him at this impasse, playing out an old story that if I just said the right thing and was very good, that I would finally be paid the sort of attention for which I longed. It didn't work. He became increasingly uncomfortable. I felt wrecked every time ...

In honor of today's SCOTUS decision and to satisfy my own curiosity, I spent my evening doing a thorough reading of Leviticus, a very small section of which is oft quoted in relation to the status of the souls of gay people. I have much to say on this, but these are my initial thoughts: -In Leviticus 18:22, God does indeed decree "Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman." In Leviticus, God also decrees many other things... - The first 10 chapters are dedicated almost exclusively to how one properly goes about being pardoned of sins, which involves the sacrifice of various types of animals, their blood being sprinkled in various places, and their organs/fat being burned on the altar. Definitely not a practice in the modern church. -You're also not supposed to eat pig, or anything from the sea/streams that doesn't have fins and scales (so no shrimp, prawns, shellfish). Definitely not a practice in many modern churches. -In...

Part of what appeals to me so much about making TV is the opportunity to embody different people in vastly different scenarios from each other and from that which I live in the everyday. One week I'm corseted and covered jawline to toes in a 1900s era period piece. The next week I'm in a sequined bikini pole dancing in a strip club full of dude extras and crew members pretending not to be having the best day at work ever. It's all there within me: the prim and proper upper middle class lady and the badass, sexy stripper. They exist alongside each other without the slightest hint of tension. They are not a contradiction. They are both real and honest, and desirous of expression. The tendency to create duality in places where it doesn't necessarily naturally exist seems to be an integral part of the human experience. We make war over the width of noses, condemn others for who they love, and kill in the name of our God who is the one and only true god, all the while ho...

Think about the time you got too drunk at an open bar on Sunday Funday, threw up in the kitchen garbage can of that Mediterranean restaurant off Castro, and ended up crying on the train platform, being prayed over by a homeless woman because she was so worried about you. Think about how far you've come, and how much more you love yourself now. Think about that moment when you were 16 and your mama told you she had cancer and the world stopped. Think about how, 15 years later, she's still here. Think about how you know the difference between "your" and "you're" and "there," "their," and "they're." Think about how when you were being grown in your mama's belly, all the cells formed at the right pace and went to the right places and  you came out in good shape. Think about how your mama's appendix exploded while you were growing in there and an angel saved you both. Think about how young and scared your mama w...

A few years ago, I took a friend as a lover. He wasn't a close friend, really more of an acquaintance, but the nature of our relationship certainly did shift. Sometimes there was far less clothing involved in our relating than before, and sometimes we did nauseatingly adorable things like sunny Sunday brunch followed by lazy neighborhood stroll hand holding and farmer's market perusing. In essence, though, we were still friends. I despise the term "friends with benefits" because it implies that being my friend is not already a benefit. Bitch, please! Do you have any idea how strong my friendship game is? Consider yourself massively blessed if I choose to bring you into the fold of my friend cult. Even if we go years without talking, I'll still be your ride-or-die hommie for life unless you do something really crazy. But I digress... My friend and I were friends but we were also lovers, and that worked well for us. He's a wonderful human being but I knew he...