Bread and Bread

1. never never land Yesterday was not an awesome day. Work fell from the sky in fat droplets and splatted at my feet, and I felt caught without an umbrella. I started coming down with a cold. And…another friend got pregnant—one who’s been trying hard, who gets it , whom I want this for—and I felt alone on my little island of nevernevernever. Why do I feel like this island in Dubai might be the world's loneliest? We’ve been at this trying-to-obtain-a-kid thing so long that not only have all the fertile people gotten pregnant, but so have the infertile ones. Single people have gotten married and popped out kids. Hopeful adoptive parents (as they are called in adoption lingo) are now just adoptive parents, meaning parents. It’s no longer just the glib and lucky who have kids. It’s everyone. There’s no one left to be mad at, because I have abandoned my obnoxious friends (or they’ve abandoned me, in some cases) and schooled the remaining ones on the careful art of sharing t...

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. ...

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...