Bread and Bread

Joewon is my halfway-around-the-world partner in medical neurosis. She's also a funny and hardworking professor in Seoul, Korea. Here's a recent day in her life. This lake makes me think I need to visit South Korea. 6:50 am. Wake up without much trouble. No nightmare. No active pain in any part of the body. Not a bad start of a day. 9:00 am. After breakfast, walk out the door to go to work. 9:15 am. Pass by the elderly man selling egg bread at the corner of an alley on my walk to my office. He's there every single day, rain or shine. Carefully look away when the grandpa's neatly barbered hairline and threadbare coat collars came into vision as I slip by, for not wanting to be saddened by things that I have no right to find sad. I would make any nearby egg bread seller a very rich man. No more threadbare coats. 9:25 am. Enter office, the usual grind begins. Read for Monday's class. 1:00 pm. Rummage food in the office, instead of bothering to go out...

Chopper--a former student whose novel I hope I'll see in print someday--truly takes the road less traveled. That road led him to rural Virginia, where he built a house with his bare hands. He's a karate instructor who could kick your ass, but as the peace-lovin' tie-dye below might suggest, he would probably choose not to. Here's how he spent Tuesday, October 29. Chopper (left) and his band, Kerosene Willy . 4:45 a.m.: Alarm alarms me. I begrudgingly get out of bed to go meet a karate student at 6. 4:50 a.m.: I remind myself that I choose to do this. 4:55 a.m. I drag a toothbrush across my teeth--pick the sleep from my eyes--put on sweats and hoodie--pack clothes for school. 5:00 a.m. Head out the door--start the truck--sit in the truck for a couple minutes. Blast Cat Empire to help sweep out the cobwebs. 5:05 a.m.: Back the truck up and head down the driveway. 5:25 a.m.: arrive at Frank's Food Mart--get Gatorade and iced tea 5:45 a.m.: arrive at ...

Here’s an unsurprising fact: Back-to-back trips to Puerto Rico and the Salton Sea are wonderful for the mind (I relaxed, did lots of travel journaling, and my cycle of cancer-death-baby thoughts hit an all-time low) and kinda rough on the body (I’m tired, covered in mosquito bites and have a couple of mofongo pounds to work off). But enough about me—onto AK’s account of her vacation with me. AK’s Blog As You Are post is a departure in that it chronicles an exceptional day, not an everyday day. But even fabulous tropical vacations include confusing iPhone directions and cheerily sexist tour guides. I’m excited that you guys finally get to hear AK in her own words, after years of seeing her through the filter of me (she says I mildly misquote her, which I’m sure I do). Now, with no misquoting…. Unlike on our trip to London, it was not hard to find a good mojito in PR. Or a dozen good mojitos. Saturday, Oct. 26 9 am—Alarm on my iPhone goes off in our private room at the ...

When Kristi Nakamura Johnson and I were college roommates, we shared a love of gay men and musicals. Then she started dating straight guys, and I went on to see Rent fourteen more times. But no matter the different paths our lives take, I'll always adore Kristi, who now lives in Sacramento, because she's one of the sweetest, most open-minded people I know. She also knows how to make a back-up Halloween costume in a pinch. Kristi and her biker girl. 8am - Made C a grilled ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast. Nursed L while drinking coffee, eating a granola bar and checking email and Facebook. 9am - Transformed C and L into Peter Rabbit and Snow White for a Halloween party at the park. 10am - Changed a crying Peter Rabbit into a Train Engineer after his rabbit pants had a potty accident. Had my husband call the pediatrician after noticing Snow White's ear draining while she nursed. The original Peter avoided potty accidents by not wearing pants. 11am ...

Today's Blog As You Are blogger, Kathy Talley-Jones of Pasadena, California, is one of the least feeble people I know. But even human encyclopedias who spend their free time hiking through the desert have moments of doubt. Read on. Kathy (right), much like her pet tortoise, Kip, enjoys the desert. 3:11 a.m. not yet not yet can’t get up yet 3:24 a.m nope 3:47 a.m. must stay in bed until 4 3:59 a.m. oh all right… 4:03 a.m. What have I gotten myself into? A deadline at 9 a.m. for a script on the power grid of the future what do I know about the grid? For once I haven’t procrastinated but I have to edit and format and come up with ideas for infographics and treatments for interactives and ah shit well I’ve done the best I can tried to make the electric grid fascinating and smart appliances intriguing and 8:58 a.m. SEND If it’s not any good, at least it’s on time. 9:00 a.m. No sign of John. Has he died? Without the normal morning cues he’s slept in, “I have 11 minutes t...

Tracy Kaply , today's Blog As You Are blogger, recently moved from Seattle to Joshua Tree. I'm planning to visit her there soon. I'm expecting dumplings and pie.    From what I know of Tracy, this T-shirt says something snarky. Since I have kidney failure and a panoply of other chronic/terminal illnesses trying to kill me, I don't work, and I am naturally a sedentary creature. So today I committed myself to writing down exactly what I was thinking about at each time the alarm went off. Don't worry, I am properly medicated. 8:20 am Woke up. Assessed situation. Pondered methods of killing birds right outside the window. Decided I was too old to be up this early without a damn good reason. Cat agrees, so we go back to sleep.   9:20 am Fine, I am awake. Cat simultaneously wants me to to get out of the queen size bed, because there isn't room for both of us in here, and he wants me to lay very still so he can be on me. I am starting to think ...

The early bird--and you will see Terry is one--gets the first Blog As You Are Project post! Here is how my fabulous mentor spent Monday, October 21, 2013 in Los Angeles. Terry and her exuberant hair. 6 am- I email my mom, who lives in Detroit, every day. After checking other email, I do my meditations. 7 am - Green shake for breakfast, make one for Yvonne too. Then drive like hell to get to South Pasadena. 8 am - Water aerobics at the South Pasadena Y. 9 am - Shower, dress, drive to downtown L.A. Check email at red lights. 10 am - Meet with Michael Garces about EMBERS opera . When will the universe provide an opening for this to be produced? 11 am - Drive home--through arts district, little tokyo, past grand park, through chinatown--wishing I actually had time to stop and wander through my city. At the State Park a circus is being taken down; red and white stripe tent tops swirled like peppermint candies collapsing to the dirt. How the tent went up. Maybe. ...

When I was in fifth grade or thereabouts, my friend Bonnie threw a Come As You Are party. The idea was that she would call her friends at random times over the course of a week or so after sending out invitations. Whatever we were wearing when she called was what we had to wear to the party. I was wearing nothing special—or rather, I was wearing nothing special for 1988, meaning I was probably wearing turquoise culottes—but I had bare feet, so at least there was that. As for Bonnie, her party outfit would be whatever she was wearing when the first guest RSVP’d. She claimed the call came (this was way pre-Evite) when she’d just stepped out of the shower. I had my doubts. I still think she just wanted to prance around her party in a bikini and a towel.  Bonnie (right), me (second from right) and the Barry sisters, as we were in 1994. Soon I’m going to launch what I’m calling The Blog As You Are Project. I asked a handful of friends/writers/artists to choose one day fro...

Dear Charlie Beck, From what I know about you, I like you. Like that one time you were walking through an Occupy encampment with a KPCC reporter, and the reporter asked you if you smelled marijuana, and you said, "Nope. Sure don't." But this letter worries me a little. First, because my car wasn't actually stolen , so I don't think you read Officer Honor's police report very carefully. But seeing as how it was handwritten, maybe you just couldn't decipher it. (Does the LAPD have a computer??) The thief took my radio, iPod and my car's computer, all of which could have happened if I'd had The Club tightly locked on my steering wheel. Although now that you mention it, I think he or she also took The Club that was sitting under the passenger seat, which I kind of imagined myself using as a weapon if I broke down somewhere scary and a creepy person approached my car. The good news is that you guys are probably out solving real crimes. Right?...

I’ve been visiting a hypnotherapist—because I’m not the kind of girl who can be content with just two therapists (couples and regular), and because I want her to convince my subconscious that a long happy life is viable, that imminent doom is not my destiny. She’s been having me write down my dreams, and let me tell you, that shit is one long found poem. Last night I attended Rhapsodomancy ’s ninth anniversary reading at Good Luck Bar and heard work by Cynthia Cruz , Rob Roberge , Louise Mathias and Wendy Ortiz . Soon I was itching to write dark, spare poetry like Cruz’s. Here’s what I came up with, transcribed directly from the previous night’s dream. I genuinely don’t know what it means, which feels like cheating, like I’m one of those coy writers. But, like about eighty percent of my dreams, it seems about guilt on some level, and appropriate for Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day/Genocide Day. A Movie We Didn’t Know We Were In We played in the abandoned rooms benea...

One of the guests at my sister’s UCLA graduation party was her high school marching band director, who was kind of sexist and annoying, but also dedicated and beloved by students who weren’t me. He asked how I was doing, and I told him I’d just finished my thesis at CalArts. “It’s a collection of connected short stories,” I said. “You wrote a whole book? Wow! That must have been hard.” “It was,” I said proudly. “And it’s all true?” “No, it’s fiction.” “Oh. You mean you just made it up?” His disappointment was palpable. A whole thesis full of lies. Writers—not to mention readers of anything thicker than Parade Magazine —usually enjoy this story. Fiction is, of course, an art. You have to create a whole world, not just describe what you see. Remember Parade? Remember All-Grown-Up Miley 1.0? But my sister’s band director might be vindicated to know that one reason I chose fiction is because I’m a lazy researcher. I love learning about other times, place...

A few years ago I attended a reading by fellows at the Lambda Literary retreat. Whenever they introduced a piece that included family violence, coercive sex or aggressive homophobia, they prefaced it—as one of their workshop teachers had clearly taught them—with “trigger warning.” It struck me as odd, because that’s not really how triggers work. Death and cancer and miscarriage—my trio of connected tragedies—aren’t triggers in the abstract. I would probably find a well written story about any one of them moving and cathartic. No trigger warning necessary. But no one is there to shout “trigger warning!” when Google Maps takes me through Beverly Hills or a chubby, laughing Persian man outside a café reminds me of my fertility doctor. Trigger warning! In high school, only a handful of kids had lost parents, and they always seemed wise and exotic, not to mention unfairly favored by our breast-cancer-survivor English teacher. I remember one of them, a warm, popular girl nam...

Better than Freedom and shorter too. Someone broke into my car late Saturday night and stole my radio and iPod but left the novel I had in the backseat. So whoever he was, I guess he wasn’t a reader. Or she. Or maybe he/she just prefers nonfiction. I had to go to the WeHo Book Festival, and I barely had time to care about the theft. I wondered whether that made me a tough chick who didn’t sweat the small stuff, who was truly grateful for the things that really counted (including the option to borrow AK’s car)—or a spoiled asshole who went through iPods like water, when there were people in the world who actually had no water. After the book fair, I called the police. I don’t know why. A very nice, but possibly not super smart, guy named Honor (really) took down my information. He asked me to describe what my iPod looked like. “Um, like an iPod?” I said. He asked me my race, height and weight. In case it was an inside job? AK and I speculated that our cat Ollie, who...