The Professional

So last night I went to a bonfire with pink eye and half a bathing suit. Bad decisions. I'm standing in a circle of smoke and every pollution known to LA is irritating my irritated eyes. Oh, and half a bathing suit? I just thought to myself as I was getting ready, "Self:" I said, "I will put that bathing suit bottom on, as a matter of fact, but I don't think I need to wear the top." What??? Why would I need to wear the bottom if not the top? I could wade halfway into the water with a shirt on, right? Wrong. I wore a dress for Pete's sake. So I could go shin-level in. And at that depth, I realized the water felt perfect and I wanted to go swimming.

The bonfire was a Mormon bonfire. We weren't burning Mormons or anything, but as a side note some of them, because of their Eagle Scout status, thought they could walk through fire and burned themselves. It was a Family Home Evening activity, a sort of Monday night mix-and-mingle thing. I walked up to someone I know, William, and he points out Kyle: who is, according to William, "the coolest person ever".

B-"Why are you the coolest person ever?"
Kyle-"I don't know. I do some music: guitar. And I used to design video games."
B-"Ah... You sound what might be the object of a lot of man crushes. What else?"
Kyle-"Um. I'm a professional wrestler."
B-"Hold the phone! I used to watch WWF with my brother every Thursday. (FACT) Do you do real wrestling or the fake stuff?"
*I think it's important here to note that real wrestling has always been sort of gross to me, but like I said: Fake stuff, like the WWF,  I can  respect (at least when I was 12)*
Kyle-"The staged kind. I almost took a job with WWE."
*Oh, okay, so he really is the coolest person ever. I get it. Ok.*
B-"How do they do that choke hold thing?"

DUMB question. He showed me. But he didn't really choke me. He didn't even really grab my neck, and like 3 seconds into it, he looked around at the crowd we were standing in and thought better of the whole thing.

B-"What do you do now?"
Kyle-"I work with hedge funds."
*Whaaa?*

What I like about all this, besides every single part of it, is that he wasn't like a MEGA TOOL guy. He was way humble and sort of shy about all of it.

That's it.
Kyle, the timid professional wrestler.

Of course, when my aunt asked me how the bonfire was, I told her: fine. It was fun. The water felt nice...

It's all about how you frame it.

To my friend’s cousin

You are not my friend’s cousin;
You are yourself.
And I ought to realize this when we meet,
Considering not my friend before you,
Considering you only
As a reference point to yourself,
And be willing to know you
As one individual to another
Not as one role to another.
There is a relationship unfolding here,
And it is not your cousin’s friend to my friend’s cousin,
It is you to me.
You and me.

In my head: Christine Allegra + Anthem 

Anabelle

It’s like trying to find it, and the moment you do, you lose it forever.
Get out the camera,
I hate losing it.

Take this air and save it.
It’s the air I breathed,
It is you.

You wind around my brain,
make me feel like myself,
like an artistic, sophisticated, silly little elf.

In my head: jars + air

My Body

So this is my body.
Bones, I’m told there’s a skeleton in there somewhere.
Sometimes I have half a feeling about it.
But I do believe in kneecaps. Those are very real.

I see the muscles
take shape,
They flow like water, like blood.
Muscles remind me of the river,
There’s no fight in them, but great strength. Great nature.
Curve of the calf, so interesting, so beautiful.
The creator liked smooth lines, and I do too.

I have this nude color all over me.
Especially when I’m nude.
All this is very interesting.

I have a perfect body.
Perfect in function and design.
It works the way it should.
My toes and ears help me stay balanced.
Perfect like that.

And then the way it moves.
The way it breathes is like the ocean.
Forever on the approach, forever in the descent.
Air crashing into itself, changing in my blood.
My air in constant transaction with the trees.
I’ll fix your air if you fix mine.
He drops an orange to indicate “yes”.

I am stretching.
She is stretching.
He is stretching.
Stretching compassion into our supposed bones, into our muscles.

This is all rather beautiful to me. 
I have a body.

In my head: Yoga + Reggie Spek + The Gospel

La LA

So I've been in LA 2 whole weeks now. I've spent a moderate amount of time brooding over my feelings of leaving Nashville. It's like this: I was on Mill Ave before I left Phx, and a guy on the street played me a couple of original songs. He had just spent time traveling up and down the west coast pursuing music, and wrote a song about the experience. One of the lines in the song was: "If home is where the heart is, then how smart is it to love in so many places" (or something like this). And that is precisely how I feel. I love Phoenix: it's where I was born, but it's also where I came alive. I love Nashville: where the trees are as overgrown as the people's love. The clash of ambition and art. And I'm starting to like LA: full of things I've never seen or felt. Full of the easiness of tan-lines, and the hardness of being lonely in a crowd.

And now, an LA experience:

Two days ago, I was walking home from an interview when I almost passed a Goodwill. I stopped on my heel and went back. Inside, I found: an awkward conversation with an old man, Harry Potter y el prisionero de Azkaban, 2 X-men comic books from 1995 that are totally rad, and 2 dresses--one of which I could aptly be described as looking like a Mormon superhero in, if only I had a giant "M" tattooed on my chest.