A Writer Gone Missing

This time I have a good excuse for the extended eight-month sabbatical from blog duty. A lifetime has passed, and I’m not in California anymore.
(With me, change seems to happen fast… which will soon make my previous statement about not being in California untrue… to be updated…) 

Thanks to twitter I was able to at least tweet every now and then to keep my throngs of readers apprised of my so-declared writing life with its unforeseen curveballs that strike me out repeatedly despite my dreams to lob moon-like trajectories into left field. I illuminated flash-blurbs that told whole stories from Motel 6’s while driving across the country in the middle of a freak-out because I was responsible for the lives of my two cats during the August dead heat to destiny. Tweets like: Day 2 – Grants, NM; Day 3 – Amarillo, TX; Day 4 – about to leave for Tulsa, OK. Saw gun warehouse just off expressway yesterday. Only in TX.Having a gun ain’t gonna do me any good unless I decide to rob a bank. I was running out of money fast, because somewhere on that highway there was also a shiny new semi truck devouring dollars as it rolled oodles of my stuff—which included a 52-inch upright piano—on down the road. C-notes were being burned as fuel to haul my gypsy-ass caravan back to Ohio.

I could’ve stayed in California and continued working two music jobs that didn’t cover my expenses—and look for a third job to the tune of never getting a chance to write again—but instead I emptied my savings account (no turning back) and moved myself and new dreams to Cincinnati, a city that I had never lived in before, within a state that was, however, very familiar.

Since leaving the west coast on August 4^th, a rumbling question has taunted me with a certain regularity amid my daily enterprises. It became especially outspoken upon my arrival in Cincinnati to complete-and-utter unknown. WHAT WAS I THINKING? It isn’t logical. No way in hell is it logical. From heaven to the murky depths, I just listened to a few whispers and let the voice guide me twenty-two hundred miles east.

Now, after two months in Cincy, I’m starting to recognize and acknowledge just how courageous I am, especially in light of… well… Let’s just say I’m in the same situation as Kevin Costner in the movie Field of Dreams when Timothy Busfield admonishes him by saying, “It’s time to put away your little fantasies and come down to earth,” which led to an argument about whether the baseball men were real, and then another reality check for Costner’s character, who needed to sell his farm because he had no money, and a “stack of bills to choke a pig.” Well, that’s where I am right now. What am I going to do? Am I going to face facts and get real?… Or…

Am I going to keep building it? And who’s coming? Is it crazy of me to want to be invited out there beyond that field, so I’ll be able to write about it?

And whose pain am I healing?

Mine. It’s what I came here to do. There’s an adolescent girl inside me who has needed to come home for a long time. And I need her as much as she needs me. She’s the bridge between the eternal dreams of my youth, and the timeless dreams of my future. Somehow I know, though I don’t fully understand the mystery of it, these dreams restore each other, especially when I infuse a revitalized hope along their avenue of connection. I’ve figured out that this is a big key to living a passion-filled life.

A dream did come true for me since my arrival to the Queen City. In fact, it was a dream that I originally voiced in my online media resume at mediabistro.com. The questionnaire section asked to describe my dream assignment. This was my answer: Similar to Carrie Bradshaw’s view on the world from her New York apartment: writing about women and sex (including older and married women), and infusing my column with the mysterious, the metaphysical, and the serendipitous effects of New York.

Well, I’m not in New York yet, but I’m now writing a Sex and the City-type column for Ms. Cincinnati magazine, its premiere issue to be in the stands by end of November, just in time for the holiday season. I’m the magazine’s new Sex and Cincy columnist.

This idea of eternal dreams can be so inspiring, and empowering. Don’t we need that unbridled energy of our youth, without trying to go back and relive it? This is a paradox I will be exploring in my column in future issues, because it’s an important subject. Maturing women have the capacity to feel their passion more than ever. Wisdom and the rebirth of innocence give the sensuous life a dimension that as a younger woman I would’ve never imagined possible.

So, with that said, I am saving further discussion about this subject for my column. Cincinnati has been my womb of healing, and I am grateful to her for taking me in.