BARNACLE BEACH
About the time I joined the Sierra Club Singles, I began to write some of my autobiographical vignettes in the third person, imagining that I would eventually develop them into short stories or a novel. I named my protagonist Seely, short for Selena, meaning “moon.”...
OPERA GLASSES
“Last night, coming back from disco class with Susan, I yelled on the top landing that it was hopeless—I was never going to find a job I liked—and I dived halfway out the open window, flailing my arms and leg (the other foot planted firmly on the ground). “’I’m going...
THE JOURNAL AS ART
As I mention earlier in Callie’s Ragbag, I was in my twenties when I wandered into a shop, searching for books for my classroom, and happened upon Where the Wild Things Are. When I got to the last line, it went right through me—whomp!—hit bedrock. I had to stand there...
CIVIL SERVANT
“An experiment. It’s too hot in the house to do anything but sweat, so I’ve turned amphibian and made bath water my element. I’m presently squatting in the tub with my typewriter on a board and my hair in a shower cap to keep it off my neck. “Today was a bummer. I...
THICK OF THINGS
Lafayette is all of fifteen minutes from Berkeley on the freeway, but being on the other side of the East Bay hills, it might as well be the ends of the earth—no one will come to visit you. Consequently, I felt like I was living a peripheral existence—in exile, if you...
SWAPPING HEADS
It’s not hard to grasp the idea that if you’ve been victimized as a child, until you learn to protect yourself—and come to know that you’re worth protecting—you’re liable to keep stumbling into situations in which you’ll be victimized again. But what can be harder...