The night of the supermoon, I burned myself on a pan full of spinach and mushrooms and a bit of garlic, which I was cooking for my mom. I was rushing and when I went to set the spatula down, I didn’t realize how far down I was placing it and set my arm straight onto the rim of the pan. Immediately the burn went white as the moon. I ran some cold water over it, should have iced it immediately, but I wanted to get outside, wanted to see the big moon on the horizon, wanted to feel it at its Biggest and Pumpkiniest. It began blistering as I cooked. As soon as I was done, I grabbed a bag of frozen peas and carrots from the freezer, the go-to bag for injuries. They’ve defrosted and been refrozen a hundred times over. I cradled them in my arms, the burn in an awkward spot on the underside of my wrist, and called the dog to head out with me.  We walked up the street, me looking up and around. A woman was heading down the block toward us, and as I glanced her way I could see her eying me warily. There I was, my jeans rolled up, one leg higher than the other, a dog wandering nearby, a bag of frozen vegetables in the crook of one arm, my head thrown back as I stumbled uncertainly along my way.  “Oh hi,” I called out, hoping to reassure her. “I’m just looking for the moon.” She smiled, reassured of exactly one thing, and continued on her way. After almost 20 years since the day I first set foot in Berkeley, I’d finally become what I’d always resisted. Another Berkeley weirdo. I kept walking and waiting. I did see the moon eventually that night, although it took me longer to find than I’d like to admit. I was behind the hills, behind a lot of buildings and trees and a playground and my own ridiculous normal head-in-the-clouds natural state of being. The burn is still a dark red. It hasn’t faded away. So I think about it plenty. Sometimes I tell a story that makes people laugh, about being in a yoga class once, when a male teacher asked, “Are any of your on your moons?” It was horrible and gross and funny as shit. But you know, the moon goes in cycles and so do we, not just women but people. For me, the supermoon came at the end of the second of two major ten-year cycles. The first was terrible. The second was fixing the terrible, but it was still very difficult. I don’t know what the third will bring, but so far some amazing pieces are falling into place. What I do know is that the burn seems in part to have both cauterized the end of the previous cycle - there! done! you goddamn did it - but also to serve as a reminder of what I learned. Over the past two weeks I’ve experienced some emotional turmoil in something I thought, hoped was one of the remarkable pieces as I started this next ten-year cycle. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but right now, it’s difficult and painful. In the past, I might have let it throw me or derail me entirely, messing up everything else in my life, might have let it hurt me so deeply I have to focus all my energy on it. And sure, it has hurt me. But over the past two weeks, I’ve focused and relied on the other wonderful things I’m fortunate enough to be building, and made sure I kept those in full swing. More than that, I was delighted by them, even on tough days, and grateful to have them in my life. Those are just as important. Funny how building a solid base will keep you stable, isn’t it. At first, when I realized I wasn’t being as tough or as strong or as graceful as I wanted, I was afraid I hadn’t learned anything from my past experiences. Hadn’t changed, hadn’t grown, hadn’t bothered to improve. Then I realized I had, because I’d kept everything else rolling along. We’ve always got stuff to work on and improve - at least I do - and now I know where to fine tune.  I also know it might be time to start a podcast called “Our Bodies, Our Moons”. 
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The night of the supermoon, I burned myself on a pan full of spinach and mushrooms and a bit of garlic, which I was cooking for my mom. I was rushing and when I went to set the spatula down, I didn’t realize how far down I was placing it and set my arm straight onto the rim of the pan. Immediately the burn went white as the moon. I ran some cold water over it, should have iced it immediately, but I wanted to get outside, wanted to see the big moon on the horizon, wanted to feel it at its Biggest and Pumpkiniest. It began blistering as I cooked.

As soon as I was done, I grabbed a bag of frozen peas and carrots from the freezer, the go-to bag for injuries. They’ve defrosted and been refrozen a hundred times over. I cradled them in my arms, the burn in an awkward spot on the underside of my wrist, and called the dog to head out with me. 

We walked up the street, me looking up and around. A woman was heading down the block toward us, and as I glanced her way I could see her eying me warily. There I was, my jeans rolled up, one leg higher than the other, a dog wandering nearby, a bag of frozen vegetables in the crook of one arm, my head thrown back as I stumbled uncertainly along my way. 

“Oh hi,” I called out, hoping to reassure her. “I’m just looking for the moon.”

She smiled, reassured of exactly one thing, and continued on her way. After almost 20 years since the day I first set foot in Berkeley, I’d finally become what I’d always resisted. Another Berkeley weirdo.

I kept walking and waiting. I did see the moon eventually that night, although it took me longer to find than I’d like to admit. I was behind the hills, behind a lot of buildings and trees and a playground and my own ridiculous normal head-in-the-clouds natural state of being. The burn is still a dark red. It hasn’t faded away. So I think about it plenty.

Sometimes I tell a story that makes people laugh, about being in a yoga class once, when a male teacher asked, “Are any of your on your moons?” It was horrible and gross and funny as shit.

But you know, the moon goes in cycles and so do we, not just women but people. For me, the supermoon came at the end of the second of two major ten-year cycles. The first was terrible. The second was fixing the terrible, but it was still very difficult. I don’t know what the third will bring, but so far some amazing pieces are falling into place. What I do know is that the burn seems in part to have both cauterized the end of the previous cycle - there! done! you goddamn did it - but also to serve as a reminder of what I learned.

Over the past two weeks I’ve experienced some emotional turmoil in something I thought, hoped was one of the remarkable pieces as I started this next ten-year cycle. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but right now, it’s difficult and painful. In the past, I might have let it throw me or derail me entirely, messing up everything else in my life, might have let it hurt me so deeply I have to focus all my energy on it. And sure, it has hurt me. But over the past two weeks, I’ve focused and relied on the other wonderful things I’m fortunate enough to be building, and made sure I kept those in full swing. More than that, I was delighted by them, even on tough days, and grateful to have them in my life. Those are just as important. Funny how building a solid base will keep you stable, isn’t it.

At first, when I realized I wasn’t being as tough or as strong or as graceful as I wanted, I was afraid I hadn’t learned anything from my past experiences. Hadn’t changed, hadn’t grown, hadn’t bothered to improve. Then I realized I had, because I’d kept everything else rolling along. We’ve always got stuff to work on and improve - at least I do - and now I know where to fine tune. 

I also know it might be time to start a podcast called “Our Bodies, Our Moons”. 

Source: Flickr / ohheygreat

In the past nine days I have cried or almost-cried at least as many times, if not more. Probably I shouldn’t tell you this so publicly, probably I should keep this for a personal diary, but I have always been terrible at keeping a journal. It’s on my list of things to do – start a journal, this time for real, and actually stick to it – so for now I will say it here. There have been an awful lot of tears and almost-tears this week-and-two-days. Only one of those cries was an ugly cry, a big sobbing mess of a cry, exploding my sinuses and making it painful to breathe or to do much of anything really but leak in every direction and rage impotently. One other was a delicate cry, while another was even smaller and more poetic than that. The others were merely stinging eyes, filling eyes, pricking eyes, welling-up eyes. Tears that stood but did not fall. A thing about me: Sometimes my eyes change colors. When I cry, my eyes, eyes that lightened from a true brown to hazel as I aged, turn very green. Eyes don’t usually do this. Well, maybe not the changing color part, because I know of other people with eyes that shift mercurially, but I mean the lightening. Eyes don’t usually become lighter as we age. In most people, they darken. Whenever I tell people about my eyes, this is what they tell me anyway. That it’s uncommon to become lighter with age. But not impossible. Last night I took a shower before I went to bed. I lingered beneath the running water, just warm enough to be relaxing at the end of a sunny Northern California May Saturday. I thought about the idea my friend had proposed to me, on the day I had been most emotionally upended: that while it might sound ludicrous, it was most certainly the moon because everyone she knew was distraught. I thought about moons, and what moons meant to women. I thought about what it meant to be a woman, what it meant to me to be a woman. I thought about the fact I had never really given thanks to the girl I had been. I thought about how little we own our bodies, in so many senses of the word own. I thought about the ways we perform every day, to others and even to ourselves, how often we are honest, and perhaps how rarely. I thought about how I would be performing when I wrote this. I thought about the women I was reading, the words and memoirs that were changing me and teaching me to truly be fearless. I thought about letting go of a lot of things, about the worry that maybe this was all something I should have gone through in my 20s, because that’s when you go through things like this, when you carefully craft who you are, layer by layer, influence by influence, and should be finished by that most certainly by your late 30s. As the water ran down my face and neck, I rubbed my fingers on my brow and down across my eyelids, down past my nose and mouth. I could smell garlic, thyme picked from the herb box, and the bright, sweet perfume of Meyer lemon, brazenly purloined from an unknown neighbor’s yard in broad daylight. I ran my hands down with the water, past my breasts, to my belly, no longer quite so flat but still smooth, and held them there, quietly. I thought, good-bye to all that. I thought we are who we are, and we change how we change, and some of us are lucky enough to become lighter as we age.
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In the past nine days I have cried or almost-cried at least as many times, if not more. Probably I shouldn’t tell you this so publicly, probably I should keep this for a personal diary, but I have always been terrible at keeping a journal. It’s on my list of things to do – start a journal, this time for real, and actually stick to it – so for now I will say it here. There have been an awful lot of tears and almost-tears this week-and-two-days.

Only one of those cries was an ugly cry, a big sobbing mess of a cry, exploding my sinuses and making it painful to breathe or to do much of anything really but leak in every direction and rage impotently. One other was a delicate cry, while another was even smaller and more poetic than that. The others were merely stinging eyes, filling eyes, pricking eyes, welling-up eyes. Tears that stood but did not fall.

A thing about me: Sometimes my eyes change colors. When I cry, my eyes, eyes that lightened from a true brown to hazel as I aged, turn very green.

Eyes don’t usually do this. Well, maybe not the changing color part, because I know of other people with eyes that shift mercurially, but I mean the lightening. Eyes don’t usually become lighter as we age. In most people, they darken. Whenever I tell people about my eyes, this is what they tell me anyway. That it’s uncommon to become lighter with age.

But not impossible.

Last night I took a shower before I went to bed. I lingered beneath the running water, just warm enough to be relaxing at the end of a sunny Northern California May Saturday. I thought about the idea my friend had proposed to me, on the day I had been most emotionally upended: that while it might sound ludicrous, it was most certainly the moon because everyone she knew was distraught. I thought about moons, and what moons meant to women. I thought about what it meant to be a woman, what it meant to me to be a woman. I thought about the fact I had never really given thanks to the girl I had been. I thought about how little we own our bodies, in so many senses of the word own. I thought about the ways we perform every day, to others and even to ourselves, how often we are honest, and perhaps how rarely. I thought about how I would be performing when I wrote this. I thought about the women I was reading, the words and memoirs that were changing me and teaching me to truly be fearless. I thought about letting go of a lot of things, about the worry that maybe this was all something I should have gone through in my 20s, because that’s when you go through things like this, when you carefully craft who you are, layer by layer, influence by influence, and should be finished by that most certainly by your late 30s.

As the water ran down my face and neck, I rubbed my fingers on my brow and down across my eyelids, down past my nose and mouth. I could smell garlic, thyme picked from the herb box, and the bright, sweet perfume of Meyer lemon, brazenly purloined from an unknown neighbor’s yard in broad daylight. I ran my hands down with the water, past my breasts, to my belly, no longer quite so flat but still smooth, and held them there, quietly.

I thought, good-bye to all that. I thought we are who we are, and we change how we change, and some of us are lucky enough to become lighter as we age.

Source: Flickr / ohheygreat

Hey New York, this show opens TONIGHT, Thursday 29 September:  Please go to The Impossible Project space TONIGHT for the opening of “OUTSIDE THE LINES” to see work by a group of photographers I’m honored to be a part of. The show runs through 31 January 2012. PX680 Color Shade FF film by The Impossible Project Photo taken on Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles CA, 2011
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Hey New York, this show opens TONIGHT, Thursday 29 September: 

Please go to The Impossible Project space TONIGHT for the opening of “OUTSIDE THE LINES” to see work by a group of photographers I’m honored to be a part of. The show runs through 31 January 2012.

PX680 Color Shade FF film by The Impossible Project
Photo taken on Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles CA, 2011

Source: Flickr / ohheygreat

Remember a few weeks back when I wrote about that guy I met on Santa Monica Boulevard? If you live in New York and are free this Friday night, please go to The Impossible Project space to see the opening of the new exhibition “Outside The Lines” and you’ll see this shot. I’m honored to be a part of the show, along with a number of other incredible photographers.
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Remember a few weeks back when I wrote about that guy I met on Santa Monica Boulevard?

If you live in New York and are free this Friday night, please go to The Impossible Project space to see the opening of the new exhibition “Outside The Lines” and you’ll see this shot. I’m honored to be a part of the show, along with a number of other incredible photographers.

Source: Flickr / ohheygreat