Bread and Bread

The last time I had a reading planned, I canceled it to stare nervously at the wall while waiting for biopsy results. We all know how that turned out. But the first hint that I might be slowly turning the dial away from the all-cancer-all-the-time-cancer-channel phase of my life (knockonwood) came the other day the frozen yogurt shop. “Excuse me, can I just say—” began a woman at the next table. Here it comes , I thought, bracing myself for a comment on how brave I was to have not found a way to magically keep my follicles from releasing my hairs while on chemo. “I really like your purse,” she said. Friday night I gave my first reading in seven months, opening for Sean Carswell at Skylight Books. It was a friendly, mellow, well attended reading, with a bucket of PBR fresh from the liquor store and no ice. I read a little bit of my near-future story about genetic testing. Jim Ruland read about karaoke in Alaska. Sean read from his new book, Madhouse Fog , which promise...

The East opens with Jane (Brit Marling, my semi-new crush) fingering a crucifix charm that hangs from her neck, asking God for strength, courage and humility. She’ll need all three when Sharon (Patricia Clarkson, my longtime semi-crush) recruits her to spy on the titular group of eco-activists. Toward the end of the movie, after she’s seen the evil done by the East’s corporate targets and sipped their Kool-Aid, she says a similar prayer. But this time the charm hanging from her necklace is a paper clip, the same one she used to pick a lock when she was handcuffed for riding the rails with fellow activist Luca (Shiloh Fernandez, my new crush because I love a boy in eyeliner). I'll bring the blindfold, you bring the eyeliner. I guess you could read that as a transition from mainstream morality (or lack thereof) to radical lefty morality, but I think the movie’s real message is one of self-determination and critical thinking. I.e., you have to pick the lock of whoever and whate...

In high school and college, I would study so hard for my finals that, by the time exam day rolled around, I was a sweatpants-wearing mess with caffeine coursing through my veins and nothing in my stomach that hadn’t come from a vending machine. Before my AP U.S. history test, I was so delirious I started talking to my Winnie the Pooh shampoo bottle, wondering if he was an isolationist (when I told this story to Andrew recently, he said Pooh was most definitely an isolationist).   How do you feel about the Stimson Doctrine, Sham-Pooh? But oh! Finishing finals felt so good. The freedom made the stress worth it. When I had a school-free, work-free day, I would jump in my Toyota Tercel and drive to the edge of the known world, which for me was Silver Lake. It was mural-festooned, only half gentrified, with little houses clinging to the hillside. I’d write bits of fiction while eating guanabana pastries at Café Tropical and try on dresses at Pull My Daisy, which was still a th...

The thing about running and walking (and I have an incrementally higher run-to-walk ratio each time) is that you move both literally and figuratively. I started out feeling grateful for a sunny morning; the words Life is wonderful may have actually formed in my head. A mile or so later I was teary, and the words It’s not fair, I didn’t do anything formed. You know, just as a general rebuttal to The Man I’m constantly haggling with in my mind. By the time I looped around the York/Figueroa elbow and back to Franklin High School, I saw three beefy looking guys, one of whom was wearing what appeared to be a bullet-proof vest. Another was swinging a sledgehammer. Is this one of those see something/say something moments? I wondered. But I didn’t, and they made their way onto campus. Probably to fix something…right? Two blocks later, I was thinking about an article posted by Craig Santos Perez, about how processed salt contributes to various diseases. When I read it, I simultane...

Fish wrangling doesn't pay a living wage. I’ve hated making phone calls since long before texting and email became semi-preferred modes of communication. So I don’t have to wring my hands about losing touch with humanity; I never wanted to be in touch. Getting my first job required me to call Lisa, the nice singing teacher who’d offered me free dance classes in exchange for filing sheet music and sweeping the wood floor at her studio. I must have practiced that phone call twenty times with my mom playing the part of Lisa before I actually dialed. I just used my lunch break to make three phone calls that weren’t exactly traumatic (i.e. no medical test results involved), but which were heavy with the weight of a future I have no energy to plan. Guess what? Two voicemails and one message-with-a-secretary. I love being able to check shit off my to-do list on a technicality. I actually really like people in person. And I like them in text form. It’s just phone limbo I hate. I also l...

A few weeks ago on Good Food —which I listen to with the non-participatory fascination that many people watch Inside the Actors Studio —a guy who might have been Michael Pollan was talking about how until relatively recently, meat was a special-occasions-only food in most cultures. This had to do with scarcity and the sneaking feeling that it was a slippery slope from munching on a roast pig to cooking up a fellow human. They developed elaborate rituals around meat eating to ensure it couldn’t be done to excess. With the exception of a petite slice of mozzarella in a Caprese salad made by our friend Hataya, I haven’t had fish or more than bite-sized bits of dairy since Earth Day. Portobello, grilled onions, cucumbers and hummus on marbeled rye. Well, I did nibble at a rind of brie last weekend. The rind is my favorite part. B and I used to argue about it—she thought the rind wasn’t meant to be consumed, and that it would poison me. (Her preferences were never preferences;...

1. dispatch from debbie downer I’m writing this at Huntington Gardens. A few feet from me, there’s a pond full of Jurassic-looking lily pads and well fed gold-brown fish. Two families of geese are roaming about, getting harassed by families of humans. With lily pads and random children. We wanted to start a "Hey girl..." meme featuring actual goslings. I’m telling you this because I worry I’ve acquired a reputation as a Debbie Downer. On Friday Alberto was talking about taking care of his parents when they get older—when he’s fifty and they’re seventy-five—and I said something along the lines of, Yeah, hope I make it to fifty . As if taking care of one’s elderly parents were a First World Problem akin to one’s yacht needing polishing. I know my odds of making it to fifty are actually very good, but I’m superstitious. I want the universe to know I don’t just take things for granted (even though I take all kinds of things for granted, like clean air and well...

1. relaxing with sex workers AK is taking this class where she’s required to put herself in culturally uncomfortable/unfamiliar situations and write about them. I clearly don’t totally understand it, because every time I suggest something (“Ooh! I know! Take that improv class you’ve been talking about!”), she tells me, No, it’s not like that. But somehow we ended up at a Korean spa at ten p.m. last night because one of the “spheres” she can investigate is race/ethnicity. All I knew about Korean spas was that they’re really naked, and Margaret Cho got kicked out of one for having too many tattoos. Sure enough, there was a sign at the front desk that said: We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone with offensive tattoos or infectious skin conditions.  The pride parade committee was not offended. All signs were pointing to this not being a great place to run around without nipples. I mean, I don’t think my tits look infectious, but the thing about having a nonconfor...

One of Cheryl’s Crazy Dreams or Part of Last Night’s NELAArt Short Film Series ? (With apologies to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency .) Italian students march in lockstep through a lecture hall to turn in their ballots before realizing the election is a fraud. Cats, rats and ferrets wage species warfare on the roof of an apartment building. A young woman hikes through the snow in search of a lost parent. A girl’s mother grooms her to be a prize-winning knitter. A couple tries to hide a runaway German prostitute in their garage during a dinner party. One bookshelf-lined attic stands in for three different apartments. A woman is reunited with her elementary-school crush on a bus trip to Mexico. A man with a handlebar mustache tap dances. Residents of a small Chinese village develop bizarre mutations as a result of pollution. Best friends are subjected to body cavity searches in a South African prison. Like this, but bloodier and with ferrets. Cheryl’s crazy dreams: 2, 4, ...

Kim is my hypochondriac idol because, despite years of panicking that she had ALS and getting checked for cancerous moles every six months, she is now getting a PhD in public health. Way to flip the script! Take that, hypochondria! On good days, I think that being diagnosed with cancer might have done the same for me: The thing that I thought was the end of the world wasn’t. On bad days, I’m still a nervous wreck. Kim and I have gone to a few seminars for breast cancer patients at USC’s medical campus. She gets course credit, and I get a vague sense that I have some control over my life. Much of the last three years of my life has been about relinquishing control—realizing that things haven’t worked out because life is random, not because I failed (not that there’s anything so wrong with failing, and I’ve done some of that too). So it actually takes me by surprise to learn that I can control something beyond what I’m wearing today and what I’m eating for dinner tonight—the ...

And to think, it used to just look like a phallic symbol. This morning I had my first radiation appointment. No actual radiation was involved—they put some waterproof stickers on me and took pictures to make sure they don’t radiate the wrong person or the wrong body part (is this an issue?), and ran me through that big medical donut, the CT scanner. Before my appointment, I finally cracked Radiation Therapy and You, a pamphlet I grabbed at my consultation with Dr. Chen back in January. It has a picture of a lighthouse on the cover, with a beam of white light aimed at the horizon. This picture is both serene and disturbingly accurate. Here’s what’s inside. (I’m paraphrasing.) Hi! You’re reading this because you have cancer. Just wanted to remind you. In this guide, you’ll find many facts that will help you through your treatment. Q: What is radiation therapy? A: Radiation therapy is a cancer treatment that uses radiation to do therapy. Against cancer. Q: Wh...

It’s been two weeks since I made the bold decision to kinda sorta* be a vegan for, you know, a little while. Last night I dreamed I was in some unnamed war-torn country in which bands of guerrillas charged down the street, setting stores on fire and yelling, “Revolutionaries go to that side of the road, conservatives to that side!” Whichever side you picked, you got shot. In the dream, I was looking for a good gelato place. So, I guess you could say there’s a lot I would do for dairy. I miss lattes and Greek yogurt. And without fish, soy, eggs or milk, it can be hard to get enough protein. I’ve been eating a lot of beans and nuts. If you are imagining a pot of red lentils soaking on my kitchen counter, great, keep imagining that. I’m imagining it too. They’re organic and I got them at my local famer’s market! I brought my own container, so no plastic was involved! Just don’t imagine me at Leo’s Mexican Food ordering a bean and cheese burrito, hold the cheese, while my gr...

1. just imagine the horizontal plane as facebook Margot, my church therapist (not to be confused with my regular therapist, couples therapist, physical therapist or radiation therapist), was talking about the horizontal plane and the vertical plane. The former is the everyday stuff, the latter is the sublime. They intersect and form a cross, she said, unless cross imagery makes you uncomfortable. People at All Saints are always apologizing for sounding too Christian. Fabulous jewelry doesn't make me uncomfortable. The good thing about Shitty Life Events, she said, is that they break you open and allow you to access the vertical plane, where God and Jesus and Buddha and the best book you ever read live. I mean, she said, the horizontal plane is still valid and important. Some people live their whole lives there. (And when I studied Margot’s amazing preppy angora cardigan, I believed that she had an investment in the horizontal plane.) But they’re missing out. ...