“What a beautiful thing, a sunny day. The serene air after a thunderstorm!
The fresh breezes banish the heavy air . . . What a beautiful thing, a
sunny day.”

We should be happy when our lives follow our intentions. We should
always respect the way we manifest the kind of energy we put out into
the world. I put my sun out into the world.

I’ve always been happy that my birthday is during the same month as
Thanksgiving; a day we specifically set aside to be thankful for
family, friends and emotional wealth.

How can I not be grateful for all that I’ve been given? I have my
health, the opportunity to see my family next month for Christmas and
a challenging, rewarding job that is teaching me so much. I have
awesome new friends here and loving, loyal friends back in New
Hampshire. I have a man of integrity and character in my life who
cares about me, and whom I care for very much.

I love this day. Because I can’t have all my closest friends with me
tomorrow, I wanted to thank them here.

And let my sun shine in your face.

MY OWN SUN (O Sole Mio)

What a beautiful thing, a sunny day.
The serene air after a thunderstorm!
The fresh breezes banish the heavy air…
What a wonderful thing a sunny day.

But another sun,
that’s brighter still
It’s my own sun
that’s in your face!
The sun, my own sun
It’s in your face!
It’s in your face!

Shining is the glass from your window;
A washwoman is singing and bragging
Wringing and hanging laundry and singing
Shining is the glass from your window.

But another sun,
that’s brighter still
It’s my own sun
that’s in your face!
The sun, my own sun
It’s in your face!
It’s in your face!

When night comes and the sun
has gone down,
I start feeling blue;
I’d stay below your window
When night comes and the sun
has gone down.

But another sun,
that’s brighter still
It’s my own sun
that’s in your face!
The sun, my own sun
It’s in your face!
It’s in your face!

I had also just started a new job. While I was dating my ex, I had distanced myself a little from my friends because they didn’t like him (and they’d also want me to tell you that they were freaked out about who I became while I was with him). But, with the breakup now made official by a football field’s worth of required distance at all times, I felt I could breathe again. Friends had been inviting me to join MySpace for months and on January 31, 2006, I finally did. (I might have avoided it a few months more had I not found the profile of my one of my best friends from high school. We lost touch in college, and I tried sending her a message but I couldn’t unless I signed up. Bean, for all that follows, I owe ya.)

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When I first signed up for this monster, I really only intended to use it to get back in touch with people I had lost, like Bean, and to stay in contact with my closest friends. I kept my friends list on lock the first couple of months, only adding people I knew in real life (with the exception of three people: Nina, Jerry and Sully, who have all become great friends). I think I topped out around 35 friends, and intended to stay there. I thought those people with hundreds of friends were either truly famous or just really needed attention.

One day in March, I was poking around, clicking on the different MySpace functions. I stumbled onto the “Top Blog” rankings, which is how I found Nina. Nina was so fucking funny that I immediately crafted a message to send along with my friend request – the first I had sent to someone I didn’t know. The message started off: “Bitch, I want to be your friend!” The rest, as they say, is A FUCKING INSANE STORY OF HOW MYSPACE SORT OF (TOTALLY) CHANGED MY FUCKING LIFE . . .

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The numbers, Jan. 31, 2007:

MySpace Friends: 419
Profile views: 23,609
Profile comments: 759

Blog Subscribers: 184
Blog posts: 85 (including this one)
Blog views: 25,539
Blog comments: 1,513
Total Blog Kudos: 919

I have always been a writer. I think a lot of people who find writing later in life have a hard time feeling that they “deserve” to call themselves writers, but I feel like I was born with the affliction. Being a friend, daughter or lover came second. That said, I never took blogging seriously. I mean, look at that word. It’s ugly. Who wants to be a “blogger?” Before I read Nina’s MySpace blog (which carried the tagline, “Blog it Out, Bitch!”), they were pointless emoticon-riddled ramblings someone once sent me a link to on LiveJournal.

No, thank you. If I wanted strangers to read my journals, I’d invite them over. I might be a writer, but I don’t like randoms probing my innermost thoughts. But damn, it was so fun to read about Nina’s most embarrassing moments. Her willingness to overshare reminded me of other internet-based writers I had enjoyed in the past, except she updated 5 or 6 times every single day. She was giving me a play-by-play analysis of what it meant to be a mother to an interracial child, a black woman married to a white man and a writer trying to find her way as a determined student. Maybe there was something to this vulnerability thing.

Then I wrote my first blog. It wasn’t anything but a little list of things that made me happy. I think I got 3 kudos and maybe five of my friends (including Nina) showed up to read it. I was playing at it . . . not really sharing anything deep or important. Then I realized that these other writers, the writers Nina first reminded me of . . . well, they had (or would soon have) MySpace profiles, too. I looked them up, added them and started corresponding with them.

Some of those people have became real life friends or mentors. It’s because of MySpace that I’ve met or talked to TheBunny, PhilaLawyer, Tucker Max, Neil Strauss and Robert Greene. It can be daunting to reach out to an author – or anyone you admire for that matter – but MySpace makes artists of all kinds so much more accessible. These people, in particular, have shown me what it means to really open up and let people see inside my life.

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By June, I was finally ready to be honest in my writing. It wasn’t like writing poetry, which I did all through high school, or like writing articles, which I had been paid to do since college. I was writing just for the love of it. I was saying whatever I wanted to say and letting go of it. “Heat and Porcelain,” was my first exercise in letting go. It was just like writing in my journal, but 1,000 times more intense because I knew that others would be reading it. Interpreting, misinterpreting, imagining. It was so kinky and inviting, this vulnerability.

From July until October, I wrote one story a month about my childhood. I was unprepared for the response and for how open people would be with me because they could relate. Honesty breeds readership.

In November, I overhauled my profile (with much help in the coding department) to shift more focus to my blog, and I began to hint at all the major changes I had planned for the upcoming year. Then I went on hiatus until the day I packed up the moving truck and drove myself into the madness that is New York.

It’s funny that this blogging thing is what helped me remember why I love writing so much. It’s great to write in my journal, and it’s gratifying to get paid to write for a circulation that’s equivalent to half the population of an entire (albeit small) state. But what I love most is making that connection with people by allowing them to latch onto my ugly bits and my demons.

I’ve used my blog to do several things:

Avoid therapy.

Identify goals and put together strategies to achieve them.

Share my passion for photography.

Pick your brains for book, movie and music recommendations.

And last, but certainly not least, blogging has allowed me to share my love of food and cooking.

It’s kinda funny. I know my stats aren’t anything to be impressed with, especially with bloggers like Nina who get upwards of 2,000 blog hits a day (or is it per post, Nina?). Hell, one of my best friends (actually, several of my closest friends) don’t even read my blog. It’s been a fun dalliance when I’ve had time . . . and when I’ve had focus, it’s been even more than that.

That you (and I’m including all readers here, not just subscribers) have found something to connect with, despite the fact that I post so infrequently, is something very significant to me. You’ve given me your time and your comments, and time and attention are really the most precious things we have to share.

I didn’t ever expect to be here a year later with over 400 friends (half of whom I’ve never met) and a bunch of people hanging out waiting for my next post. It’s really neat, and I thank you for that experience.

Rest assured that my writing life hasn’t fallen by the wayside. If anything, it’s intensified since I’ve gotten to NYC. I hope to share all of that good stuff with you in the coming months. In the meantime, browse around and see what I was babbling on about in those 85 blogs (all organized by category on my profile page). The earliest ones may not be good writing, but they are good for a laugh.

February will bring more rants and raves about life in New York, as well as a new Saucy Report, this time coming to you live from Brooklyn.

Had you told me a year ago that this silly little “social networking” idea would have brought so many amazing people into my life, or predicted that I would all of a sudden abandon everything in pursuit of a balls-out, penny-to-penny writing life, I never would have believed you. Thanks for a great year on MySpace.

Caption: Christmas with my first foster mother, 1 year old.

Caption: Christmas with my first foster mother, 1 year old.

Twenty years ago this Christmas, I had recently moved to live with my grandparents in Florida. I left my foster home with Pearl in Boston with just the clothes I had on. I arrived at a house on the water with gardenia bushes out back with no toys and nothing to wear. I was starting over in the Sunshine State. I turned eight the month before Christmas.

My grandma and grampa, in their 50s and 60s respectively, had already raised 13 children between them during their first marriages. Can you imagine what it must have been like for them to suddenly have this 48-pound, wild-haired, brown-eyed banshee all of a sudden looking up at them, wondering who I was supposed to play with and why we had so many rooms in our house?

They got married the year I was born and had long-settled into a quiet life together with careers as a nurse and architectural drafting teacher. In fact, they were nearing retirement. What were they going to do with me?

There weren’t many other kids to play with on our street. If you walked through the grass at the end of the cul-de-sac, you could cut over to an orange grove. I’d inhale the scent of orange blossoms and pet the noses of the horses owned by the man in charge of the grove. I kept myself occupied by making mud pies and watching for cormorants in the water.

Then it was Christmastime. Mom always had a few toys under the tree for me, but our budget was tight. It didn’t matter much because the projects were full of little friends to play with. Maybe grandma and grampa would get me a couple toys like Mom did.

On Christmas morning, I was fit to be tied. I wanted to go pee, but I couldn’t leave my room because grandma said to wait for her to come get me. She and grampa were puttering around out there in the living room. I could hear them.

She finally appeared at my door. “Good MORning,” she said, with her usual heavy emphasis on the “MOR” part of the word. She would do with me what she did every Christmas before me with my six aunts. She stood behind me, wrapped her hands over my eyes, and directed me through the hallways, the kitchen, the living room and then my feet felt the Astro Turf-like floor covering on the lanai.

I heard grampa shuffle into position and fiddle with the camera, getting ready to catch my reaction to my first Florida Christmas. What was under that tree? Did Santa eat the cookies? Grandma took her hands away from my eyes. I blinked, and the dream of every little child who had ever seen the Sear’s Big Book Christmas Catalog appeared . . .

Yeah. My grandparents went a little buck wild with the Christmas shopping. That there’s the picture of “an embarrassment of riches,” for a kid coming from the projects. (The first picture was taken after I had opened almost everything. When I first saw all that stuff, it was wrapped and under the tree next to the Barbie house.) My grampa and grandma still tell me how much fun they had shopping that first year and setting up the Barbie house and everything else.

Look at the Barbie mansion. They had even arranged all the little furniture and put one of the Barbies in there, with her remote-control Corvette parked right outside (it was joined by a pink Corvette the following year because Barbie made lots of friends and they needed to drive to hang out with her). Speaking of pink (and purple), you can see where my obsession started here. Pink slippers, purple Popple roller skates . . . even the My Little Pony had hot pink hair.

I also received classics like the Hungry, Hungry Hippo game (LOVED that), a Cabbage Patch doll, a little boom box and a whole mess of Play-Doh. I didn’t even know how to roller skate yet, but my grandparents took care of that too.

I’ll never forget that first Christmas with them. That they would go and figure out what a little girl would want decades after they should have been done with child-rearing is still so touching to me. And what I really love is that they continued traditions like leading me to the tree and making me wait to open my eyes.

The true joy of life resides in these moments of unexpected bliss. Isn’t anticipation the best part of any surprise?

- Lil’ Kim, “Quiet Storm” remix w/Mobb Deep.
(For more on what this song means to me, read “Music Coursing Through My Veins”.)

There is an energy that connects all of us and everything we come into contact with. If you can get close enough to touch someone, you can change them just by being that near to them. Call it magnetism or attraction – what you want is drawn to you in direct proportion to how much you want it. The fact that I need a name for it prevents me from trying to talk about it, so the lesson or the message eludes me. But other people who have this knowledge and ability know what I’m talking about without needing a label.

This energy boils down to belief. Some call this energy, this belief “faith.” Some call it a mantra. Some call it an affirmation. I (and I am not the only one) call it manifestation. There’s a documentary about it and it costs you $45 to try and learn something from it that I’m not sure can be taught. I’d tell you what the name of the documentary is, but like I said I’m not sure I believe in what it has to offer and besides, I haven’t seen it yet.

When you are able to focus on a goal or a cause, when you can actually fucking visualize the end result that you are after . . . you have almost achieved the goal without any measurable effort. And then when you are willing to prove how much you want something and are willing to put in the work to get yourself there, you can illustrate the meaning of “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

I think we all have a higher consciousness that could be so powerful if we knew how to access it. But instead of saying I’m psychic, I will say that I can consistently see an end result and then work to make it happen. Those end results become reality often enough that I feel like I can see my future. In actuality, I am creating my future. Right now, at this very moment, I can see that future as clear as day.

I wrote this story in an e-mail for a co-worker back in December 2003.

Background on the story: During the summer of 2003, I was biding time waiting for a job in my field to open up and not wanting to get a “real” job only to have to leave it when my dream position opened.

I painted houses. Exterior. 34-foot ladders. 85 degree weather. Often by myself. One time, I was working by myself on the second story of a house in Merrimack. I’ll wrap up this preface by saying that the ladder came down on the wooden deck with me on it. The corner of a garden style window basically impaled my abdomen on the way down and I had to get 13 stitches. I now have a pretty scar on my belly. (But at least I got a friend out of the deal. Thanks, JD.) Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled to be getting back onto ladders for the rest of the summer. The story below took place a couple weeks after the accident.

***

I came across a line somewhere obscure (a horoscope, maybe?) that said “Life can get better, if only you let it.” It has stuck with me through a summer that has been difficult in more ways than one. I was hating going to work today. Thinking about how much painting sucks, how I haven’t been to the beach once this summer, and about how if I went to the beach I would have to put zinc on my lovely new scar to protect it from the sun. A scar I shouldn’t even have, mind you.

As the day progressed, the sun got a little brighter, as did my mood. I was thinking about the lovely drive on Route 3A into Litchfield, with all the farms and the smell of hay and dirt. I came down from the ladder to grab my lunch (leftover spaghetti, which I hate because the sauce dries up) and was quite annoyed when I found it was missing.

You see, the dog (who had not stopped barking since I got to the house) evidently possessed the talent of being able to eat someone else’s food and yammer at the same time. Truly gifted dog. Ate my lunch. Not only that, but the lady of the house had left and locked all her doors, leaving me with no way to use the bathroom. The sun went behind a very big, no good, terrible cloud. So I got back up on my ladder, hungry and grumpy, when an elderly man next store called over.

“Is Ginger home?”
“I think so,” I yelled back.
“How many of you girls are working?”
“Just me.”

I thought, hmmm, that’s funny. I look over to check out the shuffling in the leaves. It’s the elderly man with a cane, a plastic grocery bag, and what looks like an orange softball in his hand. I get down from the ladder, delicately this time, as I have a can of oil paint (another thing I hate, even more than leftover spaghetti) and a dripping paintbrush in one hand. I approach the man.

“Actually, I don’t think she is home, because I went to use her bathroom and all the doors are locked.”

“Oh,” he said.

I look down to see he’s holding a bag overflowing with peaches.

“Do you want me to bring these up for you?” I said, looking at his cane.

“Sure. I don’t think I can make it up there. You can use my bathroom. And this is for you.”

I realize he’s holding not a softball, but the biggest peach I have ever seen in the flesh. And I have family in Georgia. It was a peach worthy of worship! I don’t know if I can express how happy I am to this old man. He has a peach for me. A beautiful peach from a farm. He doesn’t know that the dog ate my lunch and that I have nothing else to eat.

He doesn’t know that I hate getting dirty and bitten by bugs all day. He doesn’t know that I painted my bedroom a color called, “peach crush.” He certainly doesn’t know what the smell of peaches reminds me of . . . All he knows is how to share a simple gift, succulent and outstanding in its singularity. He picked the biggest one for a stranger to take. He went and got two more consummately ripe ones while the paint covered stranger used his bathroom.

“These are better than Georgia, I think,” he said.

And I think, “Life can get better, if only you let it.”