Be here now, baby. Read More

I think we could write this retro Retro piece in synchronous serendipity, so I won’t dwell on a nostalgic past. But Retrospect fills an enormous need and has created a deep and profound community where none had existed before. The timing could not have been better. I joined Retrospect on the eve of the 2016… Read More

As with most mountain lions in our region, P-22 was born in the Santa Monica mountains, probably in 2010. As of 2016, the National Park Service had caught, collared, and released 12 pumas, male and female. They roam in the relatively wild areas of the Santa Monica Mountain National Recreation Area. There, protected by law,… Read More

For three weeks I lay immobilized... Read More

The world shook beneath my feet and I loved it. Read More

Sometimes, feathering your own nest nearly thrusts you into the next nest over. Read More

I usually begin my day with a cup of coffee and a microdose of psilocybin. A microdose is defined as 80 micrograms of the carefully grown and prepared mushroom. I also take a dropper full of lion’s mane, a mushroom that, like psilocybin, has restorative properties in the cognitive realm. Eighty micrograms is a holistic… Read More

A soft, blue velvet regaled The Los Angeles night. The concentric circles of the Hollywood Bowl’s procenium glowed with a warm, eggshell white. White-jacketed waiters served last suppers on trays and scuttled away. Onstage, two microphones bracketed a single, straight-backed chair. Without announcement, a man in white tie and tails walked from stage right, carrying… Read More

I’m not much for magic, although I love “believing” the magician, probably out of sympathy for the performer. I don’t try to figure out his or her tricks, and I don’t feel cheated. I tried to watch Guillermo Del Toro’s adaption of Nightmare Alley, an epic novel about the rise and fall from grace of… Read More

I smelled the rubbery stink of an overheated engine. Read More