Grief Will Wait

Tyler Perry was on Oprah recently. Or not. She doesn’t have a show anymore. Maybe this was years ago, I don’t know, it’s the internet.

Let’s try this again.

Oprah Daily posted to Instagram recently a portion of an interview with Tyler Perry and they were talking about grief and he had the most profound thoughts for a woman who recently lost her mother. The gist of it was: “I tried to work it away, I tried to drink it away, all it did was wait for me to finish.”

Ain’t that the truth. Grief will wait for you to finish. And in a weird way, over the last twelve years, grief has become a friend. Yeah, it shows up at the most inconvenient times. I cried at my day job not too long ago because I swear this lovely little old couple was my parents and when they walked away I lost it. Then, just yesterday, the old guy in another white haired couple made the most ridiculous dad joke as I was dialing out to call a customer. I had to hang up because I was laughing so hard.

Earlier that same day, I cried in Starbucks with a friend talking about death and trauma and grief. Yes, I cry all the damn time. But it doesn’t upset me the same way any more. Grief is here, ever present. No longer the enemy, more like a friend who keeps it real.

My relationship with Grief has changed. A lot.

This makes me think I should revisit That’s Why I Hold On. Maybe it’s remained a one act play for so long for a reason. Maybe the second and third acts have been waiting for me to mature into them.

Maybe.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yesterday was my birthday. It was a good day.

There is so much coming together and yet so much still so many loose end. Can you feel it? It’s going to be a good year.

The Matrix Resurrections

Just leaving this right here.

It Wasn't Me

This photo was captured through the window of an Amtrak train on a flip phone camera. It was taken eleven years ago, May 10th, on my way from Hollywood to San Diego.

Dad wasn't doing well. He’d fallen twice in one day. I was going to take care of him for a week. Maybe the most taxing weeks of my life.

He and I had a couple of difficult conversations, like did I believe he was going to get into heaven.

We also had to go to the doctor (it's own challenge to just get him to wear pants) and get him a hospice referral. Fun stuff!

I saw Dad for last time on May 16th, 2010. He died a week later.

Below I've posted a piece I wrote about that week. It may feel a little disjointed in that it's also about joining a writing class that became a major part of my life and got me through a time that might have otherwise been impossible as I wallowed through the grief of losing Dad and then Mom six months later.

Richard Herd was in my class that summer and heard me read that piece. He asked my to perform it again at a public reading he was hosting at an art gallery. This terrified me. But he said that it could help others going through similar situations. So I did it. Maybe it can continue to help people.

The format is a little weird because I wrote this way back when using Microsoft Word. Now I need a license to access these documents as anything other than a PDF. 😕

Getting Ready

Anybody else been hiding under a blanket the last few months? The energy of the world has been so scattered and agitated I’ve been avoiding, kind of, everything. 

Well, I’m still here and I’m ready to get myself back to work. What better day than my birthday, the last day of Capricorn season. 

I’m putting a smile on my face and getting myself ready for the world. Again. Thank you to my Guardian Angel and other guides for getting me through not just the recent chaos of the world with its accompanying anxiety but this life I’ve lived relatively unscathed for the last 51 years.

Stay tuned. More coming soon here, here, and here.

Sunrise over La Mesa.

Lakota Woman

August 29, 2020
I’m in the first chapters of this autobiography. Already it’s shocking what she’s talking about and oh, so very timely.

Some people get emotional at the movies or yell at their televisions. That would be me.

I do the same thing when I read. I will laugh out loud or cry when I read. There was even one book that made me so angry I screamed out loud as I threw it across the room. I’m sure that amused the neighbors.  With the right book, I will tell myself, “Just one more chapter” over and over all night long. Things are so busy these days I don’t have that luxury often. But given my druthers, I’d do nothing but read all day long.

Lakota Woman has already made me want to rip out the pages. It’s the chapter about St. Francis School. Yes, it still exists, though no longer run by the Jusuits and the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Mary Crow Dog lived and went to school there in the 1960s. I knew this stuff happened. It was only an intangible. Until now. Damn. There’s a bigger reason this chapter bothered me so much. Abuse at an Indian school. Abuse at the hand of Catholic clergy. I need to work through the abuse aspect more myself, tangential in this life along with some past life baggage. There’s at least one apology I owe that I haven’t figured out how to approach.

Anyway, one of the things she writes about, “for the sake of objectivity,” is that two of the Jesuits were “great linguists and that the only Lakota-English dictionaries and grammars which are worth anything were put together by them.”

The Lakota language has fascinated me for years, since I first watched Dances with Wolves on campus at USC. This is one of my favorite movies, say what want, you aren’t changing my mind. Unless you’re indigenous, especially from the Sioux tribe, and give me good reason to reconsider. Always willing to learn.

In Dances with Wolves, they speak in Lakota and use English subtitles. The third or fourth time I watched it, yes, in the theater, I realized how much I loved listening to them speak. The cadence and flow of spoken Lakota was beautiful.

I should say, I’m TERRIBLE with languages other than English. There is no excuse, just the truth of the matter. I’ve taken high school and college level French and Spanish. I suck. Some of the vocabulary sticks, but for the love of all the is holy I cannot get to a conversational level.

Recently, in an effort to broaden my horizons and educate myself, I’ve started listening to the Native America Calling podcast. It’s quite interesting. Many of the topics they cover are the same as any other NPRish story (Pandemic Fatigue or Tools for Teaching Kids at Home) but from the perspective of the indigenous people. They also did an episode on the history and current crafting of Ribbon Shirts and Jingle Dresses. The jingle dress is completely modern! Only about 100 years old. Fascinating! Check out Brenda Child’s brief history here. Brenda Child is a professor at University of Minnesota originally from the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation.

One of the things that has struck me is the advertising during the show. Much of it is in native languages. At the end of a particular ad they’ll identify the speaker and their tribal affiliation. And I’ll be damned! I can recognize Lakota when I hear it. It’s so beautiful.

This has taken a major detour from Lakota Woman. Oops!

I’ll be updating this post as I read. If you’re following along with me on Patreon, I’ll let you know when they happen.

And if this has piqued your interest in reading along, you should be able to get a copy from your local independent bookstore. If they don’t have it on hand, I’m sure they will order it for you. Or, if you’d like to support me through the Amazon Associates Program, you can order here. You can also get it on Audible here.

Springtime

Tick

Tick 

Tick
It all moves so slowly

Tick

Tick
Right now

Tick
As people walk their dogs 

Tick 
And push their strollers 

Tick 
And wave from an appropriate

Tick
Distance.

Tick

Tick

Tick

Flip
Goes the calendar page.

Flip
A year from now

FlipFlip
Springtime will come again

FlipFlip
With tulips and daffodils

FlipFlipFlip
And we will be

FlipFlipFlip
Together.

Fallen Arches

“Would you like honey for that?” she asks as she sets the mug of pale chamomile tea on the gold flecked Formica table in front of me, tag twisting at the end of a string dangling near the handle in a breeze from the open door. The smell of frying bacon weighs the air as dishes clatter and metal spatulas clang against the griddle. Curtains frame the diner’s front window with a cheerful pattern of bright lemons nestled in green leaves as the morning light builds. 

They reminded me of warmer days when Sarah and I would steal the lemons from the neighbor's yard and squeeze them into our hair creating a pulpy mess. Then we'd lay on towels in her dusty backyard, t-shirt sleeves pulled up to our shoulders with the hem tied in a knot over our bellybuttons and shorts hiked up as far as we dared, desperately trying to bronze our skin and achieve the sun-kissed highlights we saw in glossy magazines. I've long since given up my blond ambition for the no fuss ponytail that sticks out like a gray pompom on the back of my head. 

The waitress' dark hair is a neat bob with bangs that brush the tops of her eyebrows, but she is too young to look this tired so early in the day. Her dingy apron is tied loosely around her hips and the inner soles of her shoes are worn down. I'd recognize fallen arches anywhere, even without my glasses.

The booth upholstery is the same mustard color as the church hall chairs in my home town, the ones we would arrange in circles of seven, one for the teacher and six for children. Why they let me teach Sunday school I'll never know.

"No, thanks. I'm fine."

In A Place That I May Not Know Of

I am safe and warm
Even as I throw doors wide open
To let air flow through
In a place that I may not know of
It calls out to me.

The urge to wander takes me down the road
With everything I need tucked neatly away.
On angels wings, with golden spheres, Serenity will soar
In a place that I may not know of
It calls out to me.

Lost in the fringes.
Lost for now.
Not where I want to stay.
Highways whisper my name.
For now, I stay.
Then all will transform
And I will be lost one day
In a place that I may not know of
It will be called home.

MARCHING ORDERS

MARCHING ORDERS
by Jonella Allen

Cupid, I've got a bone to pick with you. 

If you worked in any other industry, you'd have been fired ages ago. 

Your aim sucks. 

You're clearly out of practice. 

You're going to have to start doing better. 

Consider this your written warning, 

your final notice, 

your stale donut with jelly filling that was once covered in powdered sugar 

but now sits shriveled and crusty on a paper plate in the break room.

I haven't wanted your particular brand of expertise in quite some time. 

Then, when I asked for it, you sent me the perfect man. 

Okay, he was hardly perfect. 

Who wants perfect anyway? 

This guy, he was nice though. 

And he liked me. 

I liked him too. 

So you lined him up in front me, 

drew one of those Venus kissed darts, 

then let it flutter into haystacks like some feckless summer camp pastime.

So I want you to start explaining. 

Explain to me why you chose that moment 

to grease the hinges on my defenses. 

Explain to me why you gave us so much in common. 

Explain to me why those same things are the weapons used to inflict the most damage. 

Explain to me why. Why?

I know why. 

You've gotten by on the mass produced schmaltz shoveled 

into the lockers and backpacks of teenage girls by concupiscent teenage boys. 

We girls keep looking for these waffles 

with every nook and cranny dripping with butter 

and honest to goodness maple syrup. 

We girls keep looking for proclamations made on a cliff 

at sunset on Oahu's west coast while waiting for the green flash. 

We girls keep looking for the knight and the horse and flowers and the ring.

Wait.                                                                          

Oh.

            Holy.

                        Shit.

Rumpelstiltskin on toast.

Chasing fucking pavements.

Wetsuit wearing cat on the couch.

Marbles. Rolling. Marbles. Flicking. Marbles.

Take them and go home you selfish brat.

I had this. I had all of this. 

I had that other guy with the proclamations 

and the cliff 

and the sunset 

and the flowers 

and the waffles 

and the ring 

and Hawaii 

and even the fucking horse. 

Okay, he wasn't a knight. Seriously. That was the only thing missing. 

Oh, and the fact that, 

for the most part, 

none of those things are what I wanted. 

I thought I did. 

Refer back to aforementioned schmaltz. 

But what it turns out I want 

is someone who shares the same interests 

and challenges me to keep thinking 

and learning 

and makes me laugh 

and wonder what could happen next 

and even makes me angry from time to time 

in the name of the ever elusive four letter word 

that can also make my heart jump with a well placed smile. 

Someone like that fella you had all lined up 

before you took one too many shots of Fireball 

while trying to settle a bet with Eros 

and your bow got shaky 

and the arrow snapped in two.

So there you go, Cupid. 

There are your marching orders. 

Find him. Again. 

Not the sappy one, God bless him, 

with whom I am still friends today 

and thank my lucky stars every Christmas 

when I get the card 

that he found the girl who wants 2.5 kids 

and a summerhouse in the Malibu Colony. 

Okay, I admit, the house would be nice. 

If you could include the summerhouse 

while finding me the guy 

who loves David Fincher movies without being a sociopath 

and Bret Easton Ellis novels without being a serial killer 

and thunder showers on summer afternoons 

and long conversations in the corners of restaurants 

and road trips with no particular destination 

and certainly no planned ahead reservations 

and canines more than felines but loves all critters really 

and DC more than Marvel but obviously enjoys the movies 

and New York more than D.C. but still lives on the West Coast 

and Star Wars more than Star Trek but is still grounded to this planet 

and me, just as I am, that would be great.

So there you go, Cupid. 

There's your assignment. 

Your task at hand. 

Find him. Then come back for me. 

Shoot straight. Get this right. 

This is your chance to make two mere mortals very happy.

So there you go, Cupid.

Welcome to 2020!

New year means resolutions, right?

Not this year. Resolutions in my mind are about depriving myself something. It’s like Lent for a whole year. Or maybe the rest of my life. The pressure! Which is why I never keep them if I do make them.

This year is different. It’s a new year and a new decade. Instead of resolutions I’ve got goals. Big goals. Some are verytangible, like I want to get a roof rack for Serenity. We are going to see at least eleven states and Canada when we go to Vanstock Alaska this summer. That leads to the goal of renewing my passport. I also need to complete my advanced health care directive.

These are concrete goals that can be checked off a list.

But there are other, more abstract, goals too. I’m pretty good about sharing smiles. I grin like an idiot in public a lot. You should try it. It’s fun to disarm people with nothing but a smile. 

On Instagram I can be stingy with the likes. Why? No idea. But I am. It’s weird. I heard that today and was like, “That’s me.” There are an infinite number of likes. It’s like using blinkers in the car. I’m not going to use them up. And I’m going to take that one step further: If I don’t want to “like” someone’s post, then why am I following them in the first place? Unfollow! Hopefully I see more posts I do like and won’t have these other images filling my feed.

Probably the most abstract goal on my list is to step out of my comfort zone and take up space. I know vanlife looks like stepping out of a comfort zone. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’ve been planning it for so long, vanlife isn’t uncomfortable. It’s glorious!

However, making noise and being heard can be excruciating. Putting myself, my ideas, my darlings, out there for the world of anonymous commentators to pass judgment upon can be daunting. No, I don’t particularly care what people think of me. One of the major benefits of getting older. That doesn’t mean I want to hear what anyone else has to say about it.

Get ready 2020. Here I come.

Progress

It’s starting to look like, well, like it could be my home one day soon.

Aren’t my cabinets pretty?

Okay, won’t my cabinet be pretty?

Still on track for August 2nd. Cannot wait to get on the road!

Oh, and I’ve changed her name. Again. I think this one’s going to stick.

From here on out, she will be known as Serenity.

Miss You

Eight-years-ago tomorrow Mom played a great trick on everyone and woke up from her coma to talk to her kids and grand kids before she passed away. Her death set me on a wonky path of fear and grief and peace and success and belief in myself.

Fear levels off and dissipates like smoke wafting up the chimney. It goes away.

Grief never leaves, but it does abate. Over time. A long, long time. It’ll sneak back in too. Just not as bad as before.

Peace is hard won, but I got there. Most days anyway.

Success came in the form of a stage play I wrote and produced for the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2014. The spectacular cast of That’s Why I Hold On led the way to an Encore! Producers’ Award. The play is about tonight, that night in 2011, the night before Mom died. One of the worst nights of my life became my greatest writing triumph to date.

Now it’s time for a leap that would have incapacitated me before. I’m no longer working at Nibs.com and I’m not looking for another job. It’s time to do what I do every day. Only now to get paid for it. Not well, at least not at first. But I’m going to write. I’ll write the boring stuff for others and I’ll write what I want for me. My management skills will be used for my gain, not someone else’s. I believe in myself and my talent and my work ethic to make writing my profession.

All of this rooted in fear and grief. So thanks, Mom. Thank you for continuing to inspire and, occasionally, kick my ass.

Also a ginormous thank you to the cast of That’s Why I Hold On for doing such a beautiful job and your patience with my lack of theatre experience: Lisa Laureta, Robin Roth, Derek Green, Meitav Marom, Jason Stafford, and Anastasia Washington.

And Jinny Chung, without whom casting never could have happened.

“As I step out into the darkness from the bright lights of the theater lobby I have only two things on my mind: I should have worn more comfortable shoes and my mother is going to die.” ~Mamie

Good Night 2018

This is my 2018 top nine from Instagram. Interesting.

Supernatural does play a big part in my life and not just on Thursday nights and Netflix. What I like about these four @cw_supernatural posts is that two of them are my photos from Paleyfest. That was more crowd than I like but because it was at the Dolby Theater it kind of felt like home turf. Plus I got to see both Baby and The Mystery Machine. I mean, come on!

The top nine algorithm doesn’t count videos. I have one from Paleyfest that received 138,877 views, which is nuts! Shows you the power of a good #hashtag.

The other two Supernatural posts are reposts of one of my heroes, @kimrhodes4reals. First is Kim’s statement to us, the crazy fans, during the #SaveWayward campaign. The campaign failed to get the spinoff picked up. It succeeded in proving that women have a voice and want to see a show filled with strong women. Sometimes you have to write your own story, maybe literally. All the Wayward Daughters are doing their thing. Kim and Briana started The Wayward Podcast. Kim’s closet is their recording studio! If you want something, go after it. Do what you’ve got to do. The only lines you need to color inside are legal ones.

The point is that when one door closes, another one opens. But you do have to turn around and look.

The other Kim photo is outtakes from a Wayward photo shoot with her husband, @travishodges_us. He captures her beauty and her badassery. His caption of this photo calls her a “warrior poet”. I love that. I want to be that!

An artist that I have grown to love more and more in the last couple of years is @spaghettitoesdad. Martin and his daughter, Harper, have a cool relationship. His wife seems like a hoot! She’d kind of have to be to allow Martin and Harper to be the artists they are. His portraits are caricatures and cartoons without being caricatures or cartoonish. I know that doesn’t make sense. Go check him out. He sees with a delightful skewed eye.

My favorite Christmas tree. This is the last year I’ll live where I can see it every night. In fact, tonight is the last night it’s lit! Wow. Next December I’ll have to come spend at least one night in Hollywood.

Which leads me to the two most exciting photos in this collection: the day I found out my Sprinter was in the US and the day I met her, my gorgeous Root Beer Float. I cannot wait for my rolling home! @Sportsmobilewest should have her ready in a couple of months. Then I will be on the road full time.

What this collage doesn’t show is that I’ve quit my job. Yep. It’s over. And after about three days of swinging from smug satisfaction and having panic knock the breath out of me I’ve settled into feeling positive about the future. Short term I’m going to pay forward all the help and support I received while I was doing chemotherapy. A friend is having surgery that will need six weeks of recovery. I’m going to stay with her, take her to appointments, cook (or pick up food from her mom’s house), keep the house clean (I can do it when I need to), and generally make sure she’s taken care of until she’s up and running again.

While I’m taking care of her, I’ll be launching my writing career. That’s right folks, I’m going to go for it. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. It’s the one thing that I’m good at that most other people aren’t. Lots of people have the same organizational and office skills I do. Those skills can translate into any industry. I’m going to use them to MY advantage rather than someone else’s.

2018’s been quite a year. Not one I’m going to miss. This next year isn’t going to be easy. No new career is easy. Might be making a horrible mistake. That’s what the panic that steals my breath keeps trying to tell me. The panic lies. I have to remember that.

BTW: I do sing in the car, not well but very, very, loud. @donald_aison

#2018BestNine #HappyNewYear #BestNine2018 #AdventuresOfPonyboy #WaywardAF #SPNFamily #Scoobynatural #Paleyfest #rainbowconnection #vanlife #eggnoglatte #rbfloattogo

A League of Her Own

This image is stolen with respect from Martin Bruckner. He’s an extraordinary artist I follow on Instagram. You can purchase his prints on Etsy.

I can’t remember a time that I didn’t know Penny Marshall. Not personally, of course. I didn’t even know her name was really Penny and not Laverne. She was a part of this eclectic group of strong women I grew up watching on television without knowing they were strong women. Just like I didn’t know Laverne was really Penny or Jamie Sommers was really Lindsey Wagner or Diana Prince was really Lynda Carter.

Yes, I group Laverne DeFazio in with The Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman.

I didn’t realize I had these strong women as role models until one of my sisters pointed it out a couple of years ago. They were who I watched every week. Later, with Laverne, I watched every day after school in syndication.

In college there was a cinema class that screened movies before they were released. It was an upper division course that probably had 20-25 students in it each semester. It was in the Norris Theater, which holds more than 300 people, so they would open it up to all students. So I went. A lot.

Part of the course was that they’d have the writer and director and actors there for a Q & A. Not everyone each time, just whom ever was available.

There must have been a screening of Awakenings. Big was too early and A League of Their Own was too late. Penny Marshall was there. She wasn’t glamorous in the usual way. She wore a black sweater and jeans. Not sleek but not sloppy. She had unfamiliar glasses; Laverne didn’t wear glasses. But it was her Converse that got me. I was wearing the same shoes she was. 

It shouldn’t surprise me that some of these role models are passing. Penny Marshall was 75 years old. That’s a long, and in her case, accomplished life. And yet, when the LA Times notification slid across my phone, tears fogged my glasses. Glasses that I didn’t need when I first saw Awakenings.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know Penny Marshall. Thank you for all the laughs. More important, thank you for showing me what a normal woman looked like making it on her own. I’m sure that through all of my own trials and tribulations your example has played a part in why I’m able to keep going.