I spent much of my adult life pretending I was somewhere else. Like I needed some kind of buffer between me and right now. I watch a lot of foreign films, so I usually pretended I was in Europe or Istanbul, Amsterdam, India. The 40s were a favorite. For some reason, that time seems somehow kinder, more earnest, ironic since it was during one of the ugliest and most secretive wars ever. Well, maybe all wars are ugly and secretive.

       I remember one time, leaving my one bedroom apartment (loved that place- I didn't have much, not even a car, but I had a big, stand alone apartment that was all mine) after watching an Italian film set in the1940s,a double fix, lol. I was filled with gentle optimism for my life. It was evening, night, really. The warm, summer air was lively, as I walked down towards the ocean. People were out at the bars and diners. I was alone.

       I have this unshakeable feeling that everyone else is living their life, being normal, making and breaking friendships, lovers, stories, and I was a ghost, making nothing, but observing and sucking air and walking. Working. Living. Quietly like a veteran, just hoping for small miracles, like enough creamer until the next pay check.

And knowing there was no use trying to build meaningful bridges because my land was too different from theirs, too MUCH.

        Now, with my little midget in tow, my mental space to think all about me all the time, for good or evil, has been seriously, thankfully, encroached upon. In part, replaced with the mind numbing stress of trying to keep it all from falling apart that only a single mother with no family can understand. It's precarious, fragile, and a miracle everyday the balls stay juggling in the air.

         I didn't have to pretend when I was on stage, singing. Or painting. Or writing. Then, I was turning towards it, that mass of history and sorrow and longing and unfulfilled potential and the screaming and the horrible silences of boredom and waste and I wrapped it all around me and committed it. I used what often made me a servant to serve me for a change.