I saw a man with a gun once. It was just the other day. He pulled it out of his pocket to show me.

“It’s titanium,” he said, “I carry it everywhere. I once showed it to a group of German campers and it scared the living daylights out of them,” he said with a smirk.

I can relate to those Germans because right at this moment I had to stop myself from dropping my jaw in disbelief. A guy with a gun was standing not six feet away from me. To hide my shocked expression, I turned away to look at the orange poppies growing under the Sugar Bush next to my tent. When I saw his gun, I was suddenly torn out of my comfort zone, out of my false sense of safety, right back into the violence that’s out there, a violence that should not be here with us at this quiet campground. The gun was a like foreign object tossed at our complacency while we were all having fun sharing stories and some beers in the great American outdoors.

My camping chair was just a few feet from a fire pit that crackled and snapped as the flames burst open the dried sap-filled logs. The campground burned down a few years ago, along with many of the multi-million dollar mansions in this part of Malibu, California. There’s still the presence of the raging wildfire right on the other side of a sycamore tree, right where everything was still charred by the inferno.

It was great to get away for the weekend. Sleeping under the stars while being lulled to sleep by the ocean swell that was breaking just a few hundred yards from where we camped, was my kind of idea of relaxation. This place felt far away from everything that was happening in this world, from the news, and from the flashing headlines telling us about the latest gun massacre.

I was glad to be far away from the barrage of information pumped out at us from the radio, television, and internet feeds. Away is what I needed. In my real life, I live inside those events. My day job had trauma and bad news written all over it. I was a television news producer.

“I think everyone should be carrying,” he said as he tapped the outside of his shorts’ pocket where his titanium handgun lived. “I would feel safer if everyone carried.”

His smile and friendly face hid a darker part of who he was and what he was saying. He was the good guy with the gun. He was a retired cop. I couldn’t believe my ears that an ex-cop would be saying this to us. He must know that guns in the hands of bad people kill people.

Maybe his life inside prisons and out on the hostile streets running towards that danger we all run away from made him fearful. Did those bad guys turn him into something I don’t want police officers to be, afraid of? If he was afraid, how should I feel about what I see out there?

I know one thing, I wouldn’t trust myself to have a weapon.

Me and guns? I don’t think so. I could just see myself now pulling out the gun to threaten my husband if he wouldn’t take out the trash. Perhaps I wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger if I was triggered by the right situation.

They say many of the gun injuries and deaths involve domestic disputes. If everyone had a gun there would be more funerals than divorces.

I decided to challenge my cop friend.

“Answer me this question, why didn’t those cops go into the school?” I asked him. “What was that all about?” I said turning my camp chair in his direction and staring him straight in the eyes.

“I think they were afraid of the bad guy with the gun?” I smiled cynically.

He lifted his leg onto the picnic table. A hummingbird buzzed his neck. He swatted at it and it flew off to find a sweet wildflower to suck on hiding beneath the burned trees. My friend adjusted his black beanie that covered his bald 62-year-old head and said, “It has everything to do with Defund the Police.

What did he mean by Defund the Police and Uvalde? Didn’t the Uvalde police department have more armored vehicles and body armor with an arsenal of high-powered weapons than most small towns? They seemed fully funded.

“It’s really messed up how Defund the Police has changed the police departments in this country,” he said. “It’s affected them. I blame it all on Defund the Police.”

“Oh come on. You must be kidding me. You’re telling me that guys who are trained to run into the line of fire to “serve and protect” were spooked by that bogus slogan?”

Defund the Police was a fringe movement that was not supported by the majority of Americans. A majority of Americans had no desire to defund their police departments. I believe Defund the Police stayed alive as a political tool to get Americans scared that anarchy was standing at the gates. But how could it explain the actions of the Uvalde cops?

“The cops really can’t do their jobs after Defund the Police became a thing,” he said while he adjusted his shorts which were sagging with the weight of that handgun.

“All I know is that I am ready. I have a closet full of ammo, I’ve got thousands of rounds so I’m ready no matter what happens,” he said.

I knew I needed to stop right there or this conversation would roll off the rails of civility. Someone else should k up the conversation. But all the other campers were still stuck back at “we have an armed camper in our midst!” I was waiting for them to catch up yet and help me out but they all stared in the fire to avoid a confrontation with this guy with a gun.

My mind wandered away from this campsite for a moment. Why the hell does he have a closet full of ammo? I pictured this hall closet in his nice suburban home just east of Pasadena, and a wall of boxes filled with shiny bullets.

Then I looked at his neighbors and all their neat tract homes lined up in a row. I saw their groomed front lawns and two-car garages hiding a sinister truth. They all had closets filled with boxes of bullets. Their backyard pools were filled with bullets. There were bullets everywhere.

And my mind wandered across state lines. I saw the bullet casings of the Uvalde shooter’s gun covering the laminate floor of the small elementary school. The shells pilled up under the desks lay against blood-covered green high-top tennis shoes and on top of canvas backpacks, and, the pool next to the bodies of the children who would still be alive if it weren’t for all those bullets.

The flames were subsiding now it was ready to cook our brats and open another beer.

I stood up and bent over the grill and threw the brats right onto the center of the grill. The cool dogs sizzled when they hit the iron grate.

I stepped over to the table and grabbed my sharp camping knife and cut into the fresh buns getting them ready to hold my grilled brats. I opened a packet of mustard. As I tore at the plastic pack some of the yellow sauce shot out and hit the bottom of my friend’s shorts right where his gun was hidden. I looked up at the face of this man with the gun.

He smiled and rubbed the mustard off.

“That’s alright, accidents happen. It wasn’t your fault,” he said as he adjusted the killing machine in his pocket.

A voice I heard said a number this morning.
A tragic laundry list of inevitability,
of injured,
of dead,
of statistical truths.
A cup of
black bitter numbers at my breakfast table.

Numbers tell stories.
The numbers of lies,
of words of hate,
of speeches that divide and of weapons that kill.

Numbers, like digits on our country’s trembling hands,
broken, maimed, shattered hands covered in blood.

The numbers of lifeless piles of flesh
left behind in pools of unfinished lives,
bones heavy on a dance floor of senseless acts.

The number of blood filled bars,

the number of blood filled concerts,

the number of blood filled stores,

the number of blood filled synagogues,

the number of blood filled churches,

the number of blood filled theaters,

the number of high schools,

and the number of elementary schools.

The numbers of tragedies
shoot deep holes into
a belief that anything

can be done to stop the endless flow of pain.

Numb, speechless, a country is waiting for the next numbers.

393,000,000+ million guns in America

12,477 deaths to gun violence this year (2018)

953 hate groups in the U.S.

307 mass shooting in America this year (2018)

20 veterans complete suicide everyday

12 is the number today (Borderline Grill Thousand Oaks, CA-Nov 7, 2018)

I am a writer. I wrote a book. I know I did. I printed it out.

My book is sitting on my writing desk next to me. It is big and heavy. It weighs a few pounds. It weighs on me. I carry it with me everywhere I go. Not really, it’s too heavy. But I do carry it with me, inside of me. It’s there. It’s always there.

It’s there because it’s not yet finished. Yes, I did a few passes, but it needs more work. I can’t seem to get back into it, to give it the rewrite that it needs. You see, it’s not finished without the polish. What’s holding me back?

Everybody wants to write a book, right? Well, I did. I slaved away at getting 123,000 words down on paper. I wrote and wrote, and then I wrote some more. It was hard, but at the same time, it was exhilarating. I wanted to do the hard, to push myself to places I have never been before. I crawled out from under that rock I lived under for 55 years to lay down words on paper. They were my words. It was my book. It was about me. But it was raw and rough around the edges. It was a pile of words and chapters that needed to be refined and polished. Refining and polishing were not what I was good at.

After sending my book away to two very accomplished editors and receiving their feedback, I fell into a hole. They let me know that I was on the right path but had to cut it down, refine it, and make the sentences tighter. I now feel caught like a deer in the middle of a writing highway, not knowing what to do next. I am frozen. Fix this thing? What? How? Are you kidding me? It was hard enough to put all those words down on paper! Now your want me to fix it?

I have spent the last four months trying to figure out why I can’t seem to finish it? Why is rewriting such an overwhelm for me? I think it is because I am living in THE GAP. I call it a gap because it is a gap. It is the gap between my ability as a writer and what I know is good writing.

As Ira Glass, the creator of the radio show This American Life says, the problem many artists have is that we all have

good taste.

We read amazing books, essays, short stories, even watch films, then drool over the work of others and think, “Yes! That’s what I want to be. I want to be like that. I want to write like that!”

That’s the problem in a nutshell. Good writing takes time and commitment. No one thinks about how much bad writing had to happen before writer X got to the place where they could write so well. What did Gladwell say 10,000 hours? I have no time for that! I’m 56 years old. Give me a break.

Practice practice practice.

Everyday. Yes, I know.

But, still…

there’s the overwhelm.

That’s what it feels like to be in the GAP.

I began this pursuit (that’s what I am calling it only a little over two years ago. I dropped into it like a parachuter on a mission behind enemy lines. I was going to get in, take care of business, and then get the hell out of there. Become a writer? No way that would be to frickn hard. I don’t have time. I’m too old.

That’s been the story of my life, to do something fast and dirty. Just do it well enough, so it looks okay without committing to it. I rush through things. I dress them up, make them look pretty, and then shut the door and leave the crime scene.

Don’t get me wrong. I love making things. I love making art. I love playing. I draw, I doodle, I sew, I knit, I make animated films, I make other films, I make paper mache masks, and even make my own clay to mold things… sometimes.

While I wallowed in self-pity about not finishing my book, I realized how much I loved making things. Why? Because its fun! I can let myself be free to experiment and get dirty with it. I don’t let my ego get into the way. I make mistakes. The mistakes become a feature. I work with the mistakes, and I keep going until I have something I like, that’s just for me no one else.

What does that have to do with writing?

I stumbled upon a writing course on Skillshare. It was mostly about a writer’s mindset. The author Dani Shapiro said something that stuck with me. She talked about how she envies her friends, who are painters and sculptors, who have material to mold and form. But what Dani said next stuck with me:

The first draft is always a “first shitty draft,” as we all know. But that first draft becomes the material you can work with as an artist. If I thought of my first bad drafts as something I can mold and chip away at, it feels less daunting. That’s the key. I can change the whole way of looking at the book. I could erase, bend, and shape the 123,000 words into something else. I didn’t have to delete it. You know…I could have fun with it. I could “save as” on my writing software and play with the chapters. I could polish and whittle those sentences into something more pure and true to the story I wanted to tell.

And what about the GAP? Well, I am sure it will always be there. But without learning how to refine my writing and have fun with the process I will never get anywhere as a writer. My book will just sit there and haunt me forever. It’s time to get that thing off my back and have fun doing it. It will never be perfect, but that’s okay. I have to finish this book, let the paint dry, send it off into the big bad world, and move on.

It is really not worth standing still like that damn deer in the headlights and become some GAP roadkill! I guess that’s what it feels like to stick with it. Maybe this writing thing could be fun, after all.

Being stuck in a dream I cannot get out of has stopped me from finishing my book.
A few years ago (June 2018), I had a dream about writing a book. It was a large dream. It was a dream about becoming a writer. It was a dream of pushing myself really hard. It was a dream of accomplishment. The dream came packaged in a beautiful box filled with beautiful words, words that would inspire people, help people, and change the world.

I believe the only way to write your book is to give up on the dream of the book. The dream of the book is always a distortion of what it actually will be and the only way you really know what something will be is by doing it, by giving it space to breathe and come alive, to let it grow into what it wants to become. A book has a life of its own once you start writing it. The dream of it was only a precious box you can see from the outside. It is all golden and shiny. You have no idea what’s inside of it. But you wanted it.

Dreams get you excited. Dreams highlight a desire. Dreams are just the beginning.

Maybe the Bhagavad Gita is right that we have to let go of the results and believe the work will give us meaning. When thinking of a project, we are always caught up in thinking of the product, and we never think much about the process. The work is hard and messy. But the magic happens when we let go of those achievements and just do that work. It is all about falling in love with the process, not the product.

It is in the doing that the clay is molded. The art that lives inside of the dirt of our minds heats up and comes alive when we touch it. We need to touch it. We need to feel it. We need to smell it. We are part of it, but it is not us.

It is what we do. The process is an opening between you and the divine. The work gives us that portal.

That is the truth in so many things in life. We have dreams of things we can do. They area always fantastic when let our imaginations go wild, but nothing ever turns out as you dreamed it, and that’s okay. I think people get discouraged because the inflated idea is always so much grander than it could ever be. The illusion of that greatness, that perfect thing, stops people in their tracks once they realize that life can never be exactly what we imagined it to be. Creating something is hard work. It chews you up and spits you out. When things change and the idea begins to turn into something else, and they do, we have to be able to pivot and roll with the punches. The unexpected is always out there. It shakes you up and pushes you hard, causing a roller coaster of emotions. The suffering in life offers us clues to what life wants to become and fuels our creative endeavors. It is in the breakdowns that there are breakthroughs. It’s hard, but therein lies the magic. To be fully engaged with life we should harness all of what happens to us.

You must take action and step over that threshold, walk into the dream, and keep moving, watch it change and morph and always have faith that the work will help you. The work will open up the magic.

It is a paradox that I am living right now. To have the dream and then let go of it. In the end, once you let go of the dream, it rewards you with the beauty of the process. That is what I am learning. Just keep working.

“A memoir is a hard thing to write”

A memoir is a hard thing to write. How can I choose the memories that tell the reader who I am? How much do I really want to tell? I hear a voice inside me all the time wanting to make my book so perfect, to tell the whole story and nothing but the whole story. But I know I can’t do that it one book. There are too many stories to tell.

“A poet never finishes a poem, they just abandon it.”

I am having a difficult time revisiting my book each day though I know that I have to get it done. The more I wait the more it slips away from me. As a wise teacher once said to me, “A poet never finishes a poem, they just abandon it. So publish your damn book!” He also said, that eventually that book will become stale. If you let it sit too long you will out grow it. You must finish it and move on.

I can’t seem to finish it. The first and second drafts are done. The third is hard. I seem so far away from it. I fear revisiting it because I see that writing and think who is that there on that page? I see myself one year ago and I don’t recognize myself. I am not that person, nor am I that writer anymore.

The resistance is strong but I will “keep on keeping on” and try to tame the monster long enough for it to come out in a coherent manner so that everyone can enjoy the ride. I’ve got to finish this book! And soon!

It all started about a year ago when I started writing a book about my trip across the United States by bicycle. It was a challenge that I created to force myself to do what I feared most, WRITING! So, I sat down at the page, enrolled in a recommended creative writing course with Jack Grapes, and began my journey. I’m still on that uphill climb. With the help of my Jack Grapes family it is far less painful.

Because of that nurturing family of writers that took me into their arms and just wouldn’t let go, I am still writing. I have really gotten to like it, even though it never gets easier. I have stuck with it. And I feel good about that. I have also completed 2 drafts of the book I’m calling “Across America: a slow roll through America and back to myself”. I can’t believe I have written a book! Can you imagine that?!

So, now what? Well I decided to sign up for IWOSC (Independent Writers of Southern California) seminars about book publishing and marketing. The first thing that I learned was that I needed a website! Oh no! I really didn’t want to pay thousands of my precious saved dollars to have someone design a website for me! And where would I find that person anyway? So, I decided to do it myself.

At the beginning of 2019 I started learning how to create a WordPress website. I had dabbled a little with website design in the past but never got really good at it. I usually quite before the going got tough. But this time it was do or die a slow death in total obscurity. And that’s when I entered into the first rabbit hole. Down into the abyss I went, falling into deep frustration and tech brain overkill. I bought website building software Elementor and Elementor Pro. I learned how design banners, footers, and pages. And I learned quickly how to burn myself out! All that nearly killed me! I gave up in the middle of March when I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I dove back into the writing thing, which, in case you’re wondering is a completely different mindset. Jack’s classes seemed to help get back to my writer’s mindset. With each class I learned more and more about the craft of tonal dynamics, how to texture my writing, and even write poetry! If you can believe that! It most importantly taught me to trust the process and just keep writing.

As I slogged through a second rewrite of the book I noticed that my writing really improved after months of a diligent work ethic. So, I felt good about myself and went back into the publishing seminars that taught me that no publisher or agent will work with me unless I brought a large group of “followers” with me. Like I was chopped liver or something? Seriously? I have to go back there?

I had to do it. I had to march right back up against the technology wall and scale it. I had to prove to myself I can get things done. So, I streamlined the website and made it simpler. Then I heard the marketing gurus say, “GET AN EMAIL LIST! MOST IMPORTANT thing an author can do”. Really? Does that mean I have to jump into the deep end and also go to the dark side? to Social Media? – Social Media that thing which I abhor and think is a giant mind bending, hate spewing, waste of time! Come on now! Get a grip – that “social media” thing will push people to my website where they can sign up for my email list. That’s how it is supposed to work. At least in theory.

Well…my bootstraping continued and I signed up for Mailchimp the free email list provider – I had no idea what I was doing. And oh great! Another thing I have to learn. Seriously! You got to be kidding me! Now… if it wasn’t for YouTube and some great tutors such as Ferdy Korpershoek, and Adam Preiser and Darrel Wilson and the NaturalVita gal I would be living in a deep dark webstite site building, email list building, hell! But I climbed out of the rabbit hole in one piece, alive and kicking and ready to write another day. Thanks guys. Everyday is another day.

I know I still have a long road ahead but I am slowly getting the hang of it. Everyone had to start somewhere. I feel good about the fact that me – A 55 year old woman is well on her way to creating an author platform that works. WOW, I can believe I did it.

Remember to “breathe, smile, and find the wonder” every day. And please sign up for my email list!

I imagine 

    their ancestral home lands, the soils of fertile rich other places,

    of coffee, of cinnamon, of nutmeg, of ruby red peppers and spice, 

I stand.  

and …I am not able to say anything.

I look again, I see 
the shades of our past, 
the shades of our truth, 

I see the shades of America, 

I see …

    my reflection in the glass.

    I read the name and the date and the place.

I stand. 

and…I am not able to say anything.

 The jars illuminate. 

Our focused attention

    on the horrors inflicted on bodies of innocent men,

men guilty 

    of being a shade of color darker, 

men guilty 

    of being the object of

    our greatest affliction 

    to inflict unconscionable pain and suffering on 

    another human being, 

men guilty of being 

    of these events, of these places, of these crimes against them

     that will always remind

us of what America was built on,  

    the backs, the arms, the legs, the festering wounds,  

    the shackled ankles and wrists,

    the cracked skulls, 

    the broken souls,  

    and the shallow graves of the stolen people.

I stand and…

     I am not able to say anything.

I walk,     up  the memorial path along the sacred ground, 

I walk,

        under the hanging brown rusted edifice,

I walk slow.

        looking up to see the place engraved in block letters,

         Montgomery Alabama, 

        Clarke Mississippi, 

        Cooke Texas, 

        Jenkins Georgia.

places hanging above me.

    hanging there to remind me of those that died.

I stop, I see, I breathe, my heart skips a beat

    I am again standing

a witness

of a history that cuts deep into my ability to say anything.

I am still.

I am quiet.

I am here.

I am overcome with the numbing sensation of this horrible truth.

and…I am not able to say anything.

Stuffing toilet paper in my ears doesn’t work all the time.
Sometimes the music is just too loud.
Johnny is an asshole and sucks cock.
It says it right there.
A knife to the door of the stall does the trick.
The poetic
musings of a spurned girl etched in block letters.
How long must she have been in this stinking shit hole to get those words just right?
just there, just where her bold statement gets read.
It smells like urine, vomit and strawberry flavored vape pens.

My pissing is done.
I push passed the white faced, shitfaced young ones.
I look at them, in their heals and tight skirts, full round silicon tits,
Their ruby red lips, flat tummies, and their wide open eyes.
A public spectacle
of misplaced desires to fit in.
Johnny is an asshole and sucks cock.

They don’t look at me anymore. The old ones do.
They open their
dirty mouths and let their tongues just lay their with their dirty thoughts.
I should go home.
What kind of trick will get me outta here. I’m too old for this.
Johnny is an asshole and sucks cock.