Me & Holden Caulfield

Field of ears

I just read Catcher in the Rye again.

Funny how different you can see a book the second or third or fourth time you read it.

In high school, as a mixed-race-white-looking-class-individual-child-of-divorce-latchkey-kid, I saw Holden Caulfield as a hero: a justifiably disaffected, per… Read more...

Empathy All Around

Man playing saxophone

I gain empathy for a person immediately after I get to know them. We all do. That’s how it works.

But why wait until then?

I went to a Latin Jazz/Funk show because I felt the need to move around after a particularly heavy week. We got there early to beat the crowd and get a g… Read more...

The Key to Impressing People

I was hard at work prepping for a school fundraiser at my house.

I had just finished calibrating the stereo and microphones. I still needed to set up the auxiliary A/V system (just in case), make blackberry rosemary syrup for the cocktails, trim back the ivy on the stoop, vacuum t… Read more...

Path to Redemption

Persons raising hands

Redemption only comes to those who are willing to gather the pain they’ve caused

and put it back inside their own body.

It is not a collaborative effort. It is not something to ask for. It is not found nestled neatly into words.

Relief from torment is in the ache.

Look nowhere … Read more...

In Common

Trees in fog

Things are tough out there.

I’m seeing a lot of pain in people, doing more therapy than career coaching.

People are having the rug pulled out from under them, people who never thought they’d be the ones getting hit.

Layoffs to fix balance sheets.

Strikes to balance paych… Read more...

Go On.

When someone breaks something of ours – a thief cracking our window, a boss changing our schedule, a loved one not showing up — we blame them for disrupting our way of being. We villify them.

And perhaps we are right. Maybe they are the evil in our hero’s quest.

B… Read more...

The Last Staple

Staplers

I finally ran out of staples.

It took 25 years.

In my first job as a temp at the Writer’s Guild of America in Los Angeles, I went into the supply closet after hours and stole a crate of staples. Not a box, a whole crate.

The staples were for my manuscripts.

Writing was my thing… Read more...

Tricky Trick

photo of man walking of foot bridge

Some days, I feel like I’ve cracked the code in making a living, that I’ve created a business where I draw people to me at the most pivotal times in their lives, a facilitator of change, a beacon of hope (and paid for it too!)

Unabashedly me. And the “me” p… Read more...

Good Is Good

black trash bin on sidewalk during daytime

I’ve noticed this scenario with activist groups:

PROTESTER 1: We did it! We got them to make a change.

PROTESTER 2: Well, we never should have had to fight for this in the first place.

Or this…

PROTESTER 1: We raised $100,000!

PROTESTER 2: Yeah, but what about all the fami… Read more...