I envy people who can go to sleep by midnight. Who can get under their warm covers and feel their skin touch the smooth surface of their sheets and know that soon they will drift off to a night of dreams, leaving their questions or compulsive thoughts for the next day. I envy them because I simply cannot follow such a routine.
[Content warning: sexual assault]
How strange to be an adult this time around, to have the vocabulary to describe what took place in my body, to have enough self-esteem to tell myself: You deserved better than that. “I mean, is it really that prevalent? Does it really happen this often?”
“Yes,” the nurse said simply. “It happens all the time.”
Like the salmon, who start their home in freshwater and migrate to the ocean then return home to spawn and die, our internal celestial soul maps are not determined by passports and borders.
No matter how smart or self-sufficient you are, the day may come when someone else takes care of you. Someone will give you medicine, drive you to doctors’ appointments, take control of your finances, and change the batteries in your hearing aids.
Born in May 1967, pre- “Summer of Love,” I am the child of quintessential hippies. My mother taught me everything I know about being laid-back, peace-loving, and eccentric. My mom, who legally changed her name to Bunee (like a rabbit), named me Sunee (like a sunny day). People used to comment, “Your names are so cute!” when they heard our names.
No one wakes up one day and says, “I want to be a witch.” Except for me. I had been an atheist for a couple of years, delving away from my Christian path in secret. Magick, or the natural use of energy to produce change, is a big “no no” in the Christian community, but I always wondered why.
Like a Tibetan sand painting, I created hundreds of bite-sized works of art that lasted as long as a server walking through a room. Then, swept into the oblivion of a black trash bag. Organic, local, wild-caught, free-range, grass-fed, farm-to-table, table to trash.
November 2020. I’m forty-one and my daughter is thirteen months. When breastfeeding, I feel my breasts to see which has more milk. Grab my boobs like udders. Check my supplies. On the underside of my left breast, about six o’clock as the doctors and technicians would eventually refer to the location, I find a lump. I’d heard about the infamous lump women are supposed to check for in showers and self-exams.
My doctor wore the expression of someone with a problem to solve. And he was looking at me.
I froze, a cup of water midway to my mouth. Prior to seeing his furrowed brow and pinched lips, I had no more than mild curiosity about the outcome of the questionnaires I had completed, designed to determine whether or not I had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder …
It’s easier now than ever to play and get into video games, but as we become more comfortable with digitization, I wonder about the preservation of old and lost video games, in the same way I wonder about old films and stories.
“No one wears sarees in America,” my husband who was on an H1 visa in the United States said when I asked him what clothes I should bring. It was 1999, I was newly married when I said goodbye to everything that was familiar in India, and packed twenty-three years of memories into two compact suitcases, not knowing when I would return.
My daughter, Rebecca—from mannerisms and facial expressions, to likes and dislikes—is a mini me, except for the fact that she is much taller than I am. Every year at our Drama Club banquet, we had the tradition of giving out funny awards to everyone. From the time she was nine until she was my student, Rebecca’s award was “Most Likely to Become Her Mother.”
For the first time in six years, I invited my mom to sleep under the same roof with me. I was graduating from college the next day, and I wanted her to be there when I walked across the stage in my green cap and gown, triumphant against the odds.
Not having child care sucks. I had child care. I had a miraculous saint of a woman who knew baby sign language and spoke Spanish and could be trusted with my daughter. But, she revealed herself actually to be an evil, disappointing deserter that quit with no notice. Well, eleven hour’s notice. Text came through Sunday at 9 p.m. before work on Monday at 8 a.m.
Team tryouts this week. If you want to perform at Camp Hollywood, show up at the studio on Monday.
This announcement popped up in my social media feed about two days after I turned sixty-three. Camp Hollywood is a huge deal for Lindy Hoppers and other swing dancers.
Earlier this year, I read A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. If you haven’t read this book yet, be advised, there are spoilers ahead. It took me two whole weeks to read this novel, nearly 800 pages of torture for the reader. Yanagihara’s story follows Jude, a character who, according to an interview, is someone who simply “never gets better”
The other day, I watched L.A. Story (1991) with Steve Martin for the first time since I was a child. It’s a story about Harris K. Telemacher – a wacky television meteorologist by day, an intellectual with a PhD in Arts and Humanities by night. Harris lives in Los Angeles, a city known for valuing wealth and appearance over knowledge and character…
Between June and July, you lost twenty pounds. And maybe he died because of it. Wait. Was it fifteen pounds? Eighteen? You can’t remember, and it doesn’t matter—Maybe he died because of it…
With fanatical determination, I memorized the required lines to affirm I took Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, all the while thinking to myself, “I absolutely believe no such crazy thing.” After my baptism on that hot summer day, I finally felt like a proper member of my southern family, and not just the cousin from California-where-all-the-weirdos-lived. I was euphoric, enjoying Jell-O salad and sweet tea with my kin. But when I returned to California, Christian hymns and sweet baby Jesus were put away and forgotten.
I hit a writing wall. I could construct a narrative and cast characters, but I didn’t enjoy the sentences I wrote. I didn’t know if they communicated what I thought they did. I could write one I liked every now and then, but I want to write well on purpose, not by accident.[…]
The first time my classically trained ears hear “Forty Six & 2” by the legendary metal band Tool, I was washing dishes alone in my apartment, music blasting through my Bose headphones. I had heard of Tool before, of course, but in high school my best friend wouldn’t stop talking about them, but, like everything else that was overtalked, I ignored them. I wasn’t really into heavy metal at the time either. I didn’t find much of what I was looking for in heavy metal, but I opened my Spotify app and search for Tool. What I really wanted to do was focus, and the way that I focused best was through classical music…
I’m crying in the principal’s office, but I’m an adult. I’ve just quit my job at the school where I started my teaching career, and I’m telling my boss why. No, I don’t have a job lined up. No, it’s not because of any negative experience: I love this campus and the community I’ve made here since 2013. I just… need to go.
Hearing someone else’s perspective inspired me. That’s what I’d forgotten. It was 2016. I’d lived in New York City for almost four years. I was still working on a YA manuscript that I started writing four years ago during NaNoWriMo. I’d had one short story published in a magazine, but that was a while back. I had a new desk job in the city where I tried to dodge invitations to go to Chop’t on my lunch break so I could write. I had a writing partner who lived in Albuquerque, and we were working on TV scripts together. Our G-chats about story ideas were fun, full of energy, and always gave me ten new ideas for our script. But novel writing remained a long and lonely process…
My old creative writing teacher leans his squat body against his desk, his girthy thighs splayed across the seat of his swivel chair. I’m sitting beside him in one of those plastic stand-alone chairs with metal legs that are inherent to schools, and I’m sporting tight clothes that don’t technically break the standardized dress code, though some teachers in the halls give me looks. The way we’re sitting, mere inches from one another, close enough to touch, feels uncomfortably familiar, but I push the thought from my mind.
Thick clouds took over the sky as I raced down windy roads, trying to beat the impending storm. Against the strong wind, trees bent uncomfortably close to my small, red car. I zipped around tight corners hoping, more like praying I’d make it to the town hall in one piece.[…]
This year-long hunker-down reset my rhythms to a slower, less eventful pace. The pandemic gave me an excuse to do what I would rather do anyway. I am loath to give up sleeping until I feel ready to get out of bed. I don’t want to go back to traffic jams and parking tickets or obligatory events. Though I suppose that’s not entirely new. I am happy in sweatpants. I don’t miss zippers. Or shoes. […]
What do a Pentecostal minister, a hobbling chicken, and a German immigrant have in common? Me! The minister was my maternal grandfather, the chicken was a family pet, and Mr. Wagner was my flute teacher. Another shared aspect was their ability to sometimes completely baffle me […]
Books have been some of the best friends I’ve ever had. They’ve kept me company when I was lonely, taken me on great adventures, helped me explore other cultures and worlds, and given me deep insight into myself and the Universe. But one of the most precious gifts I have received through reading books is healing – spiritual and emotional healing.
A meme started going around this year that hit close to home. It goes like this: “Men will literally ___ instead of going to therapy.” There are many of them, and a lot are hilarious. They poke fun at deserving men (“Men will literally run for president instead of going to therapy,” “Men will literally invent Facebook instead of going to therapy”) and the toxic behaviors of literary characters (“Men will literally hide a portrait of themselves that ages while their physical form stays young and beautiful instead of going to therapy”).
I feel I haven’t even made it to adulthood, let alone nearing menopause. My outer woman struggles to have a purpose, but inside I have never felt more capable. I’m panicked. I feel trapped in my body.
A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.
We’ll keep you fed with great new writing, insightful interviews, and thought-provoking art, and promise with all our hearts never to share your info with anyone else.
Photo by Mimi Moromisato
Marc Sendra Martorell/Unsplash