I love subcultures. Oh I do. I love them so much. This explains why I can watch endless episodes of Louis Theroux documentaries and never get tired. This is the reason why I look forward to Hoarders and 16 & Pregnant every week, as if my life depends on it. This is the reason why that when the chance presented itself to cover a Belly Dance Festival, there was no way I could say no.

You can find the article in the Glendale News-Press here: All The Right Moves, but here is a choice quote on the art and history of belly dancing:

“It doesn’t matter what year it is, this is never going to go out of style as women become more in touch with themselves, their own power and lives.”

Enjoy some photos!

What does it mean if you want to be too many things at once?

I think I have terminal ADHD, meaning this indecision business and wanting everything and anything now, now, now is going to truly kill me, because the world just isn’t letting me break out of this pigeon hole that I feel like I’m stuck in.

I needed some comforting tonight, so for the first time in so many months, I started listening to music. It’s not that I don’t listen to music, hell I listen every single day.

Music is what saves me from going insane inside the cubicle I sit in and in many ways, music is what saved me tonight because I really listened.

I listened to Antony and the Johnsons and Amy Winehouse and José Gonzales and Air and Dustin O’Halloran and John Lennon and Yann Tiersen and whatever I felt like was going to stop me from tumbling down the rabbit hole into nothingness.

Is it normal to know what you want and not know what you want with such intensity?

Maybe I’ve lost my muchness like Alice.

The thing is, I’ve never just wanted to be one thing. When I was younger, I would switch career ambitions every 24 hours. I wanted to be a veterinarian, an archeologist, a microbiologist, a painter, I wanted to work for the Centers for Disease Control and be a part-time ballerina at the New York City Ballet.

And then when I was 12, I discovered something that allowed me to experience anything and everything: journalism.

And it was magical.

The truth is, there’s too much I want in this world. The truth is, I need to slow down. The truth is, I don’t want to.

Paul and Julia Child, circa 1952

It’s 12:05 a.m.  on a very dark and rainy Monday in Los Angeles, and for the first time in so many months, I’m actually not forcing myself to fill this little white box with words that form coherent sentences, but rather they seem to be coming on their own.

Don’t ask me why.

I watched “Julie & Julia” for the third time a few hours ago, but I still haven’t managed to get through the book, even though I bought it probably a full year before the movie came out.  Doesn’t seem like I’ll ever finish it, but I’ve made peace with it.

I often wonder about starting a blog exclusively about food or some niche subject or another, but the problem is that I’m just interested in too many damn things, that I couldn’t just concentrate on one and give up the rest.

If I started a food blog, where would I write about media and journalism? If I started a Los Angeles blog, how could I discuss my penchant for embarrassingly cheesy films or write about my travel adventures? It just doesn’t seem like it would work for me, at least not while I want to have my hands in every pie.

And that’s part of my problem in life, isn’t it? That I want to do everything and anything all at once, which leads me to self diagnosis this problem as ADHD.

One minute I want to be an investigative reporter covering the latest environmental problem, another minute I want to write interesting, insightful human interest stories and then I want to be a novelist, a blogger, a photographer, a gardener, a film maker, a baker and God only knows what else. And I would gladly love to be ALL of those things, but this silly, stupid world just won’t let me.

I want to travel, yet have a lovely space of my own to live in. I want work to be my life’s passion, not somewhere I feel relieved to leave every day. I want to be a whole hearted journalist and writer.  I want to live my life according to “joie de vivre.” The more I think about it, the more I realize that my being born in this era was such a mistake. I wish I could rewind my birthday several upon several decades back - back to typewriters, hat boxes, to fresh open air markets and to more opportunities to experience the joy of life.

Bonne nuit, réves doux.

Until we meet again.

I was feeling especially festive this Easter and kind of sort of fell into taking over egg dying duties at my house. After a few hours of trying different color baths (and my hands looking like something from Return of the Living Dead) I ended up, quite accidentally in fact, with an egg tribute to Alice in Wonderland. Enjoy a few photos below.

There’s something you should know about me. I love prison documentaries and homicide/crime programs, especially on a lazy Saturday night.

I find them riveting. I’ll sit down to watch just one, and before you know it, I’ve spent eight hours learning about the New Mexico Penitentiary and the riots that went on there in 1980 (Thanks, MSNBC)

On one particular Saturday afternoon, I found myself watching a documentary on the L.A. County Coroner and how they deal with homicides. Of course, I couldn’t change the channel because a) It was about Los Angeles and b) I find the inner workings of government agencies that deal with criminals and death just fascinating.

This documentary was mostly about how the Coroner deals with deaths from gang violence, accidents, etc. and wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary, but something struck my interest enough to wander onto their website - which comes complete with a creepy gift shop named “Skeletons in the Closet,” mind you.

After a few minutes, I felt like I had struck gold:

The L.A. County Coroner has a database dating back to the 60s of bodies that have remained unclaimed, meaning no next of kin has come forward to claim and bury the body.

The wheels in my head started spinning with a million questions. But who are these people? How did they die? Why hasn’t anyone come forward? For days I thought about this list I had “discovered.”

The thoughts wouldn’t go away. I wanted to know more. I thought about how I could frame this into a story and who I could pitch it to.

Somehow at the same time, Spot.us, a new innovative journalism model was on my radar. I had been thinking about submitting a proposal to the site, which uses crowd-funding to support stories, for quite a while. Luckily for me, my thoughts about the coroner and Spot.us collided at the same time.

I immediately got to work researching, interviewing an L.A. County Coroner official, digging up facts, details and eating it all up all along the way.

The result?

A story proposal on the site which you can see here ( as well as on the sidebar of this site). Telling you that I’m excited about being a part of this is the biggest understatement of the year. This story makes me feel like my journalism dreams are finally coming true. For the first time in a long time, I feel so happy that I’m actually somewhat proud of myself, and that’s hard to come by for a writer, believe me.

If you’re reading this, and you also share a morbid fascination with me about where this vast city’s dead end up when no one comes forward to claim them (sometimes due to not being able to afford it), and how certain groups are helping fill the gaps where the city cannot, please consider donating to see this story come to life. Or at least pass it on if you can!

I promise to get you a “Body Outline Polo” on my way out of the Coroner’s office.

The following are excerpts and photos from my travel journal about time spent in Dublin, January 2010.

Dublin - 10 a.m.

We just arrived and I am already loving it. It’s green everywhere and all the buildings are brick red. The weather is nippy, but absolutely perfect. It is the most quaint town I think I’ve ever been in.

We’re sitting in Butler’s Chocolate cafe, the Irish equivalent of See’s Candies. The town is just waking up, going to school, to work, to start life.

As for me, I feel like I’m cheating life at the moment because my only worry is checking into our hotel in a few hours.

London was freezing compared to Dublin. This seems like a perfect blend of a metropolitan city and a small community.

I love hearing Irish people talk and I also love how all the street signs are also written in Gaelic.

This is  a writer friendly town, with homages to James Joyce and Oscar Wilde and more.  Somewhere were writing is not only respected but praised and admired.  As far as I can tell, Dublin is a  great city to foster creativity.

Ah yes, they also read newspapers. I already love it.

12 p.m. Dublin Writer’s Museum

1 p.m. Francis Bacon exhibition - Dublin City Gallery

I like old women who come to museums in the middle of the afternoon in a large group. The Francis Bacon exhibition moved me. He was an amazing talent and I feel lucky to have seen it in such an amazing city.

In the gallery café, I had creme of mushroom soup and the famous Irish soda bread. A woman dropped a five euro on the ground and I had K tap her shoulder and let her know.

She was grateful.

8 p.m. Man Utd vs Manchester City game at the International Bar. A big cauldron of soup sits in a corner, and people are slowly piling in this comfortable, yet dark space. I order a Guiness, my first ever.

I hate beer, but in the spirit of Dublin, I decide to try it. It was smooth and light and glided down my throat like water. Drink. Watch. Cheer.

I felt so happy. Do you know how that feels, to be truly happy? I felt it.

Gráím thú, Dublin.

It’s been slightly over a month since I have been home from my European adventure and still the feelings, the memories, the experience lives with me as if I was still there. I miss it every single day, which is probably why I have been holding off on sharing photos of my trip here - as soon as I post them I’ll know for sure that it’s over, that I’m back in Los Angeles, that cobble stone streets, lazy weekdays in quaint cafés and taking the metro have been replaced with traffic jams, absolutely no inspiration to write and a daily routine that is slowly going to amount in me having a nervous breakdown.

So I decided to make macarons.

Little did I know the amount of work I was getting myself into.

It’s funny how these little almond flour cookie contraptions took over my life. When we were in Paris, we stopped outside Ladurée, the famous French pastry shop known for inventing the macaron, but after looking at the slightly ridiculously expensive menu, we decided on another nearby café. At the time, we didn’t realize what we had missed, and I suppose the macaron challenge I presented myself with was an effort to make up for it.

It was an ambitious project, one that I didn’t over think too much, which was a good thing. After sifting and whipping and sifting and folding, my first batch, although a great effort, cracked.

That’s when I realized how incredibly important the consistency of the batter was. I had folded the batter exactly 50 times, but realized that it needed a few more turns.

Why must the French make everything so damn hard?

The second batch came out much better - any French chef would have been proud. I happened to use a Martha Stewart recipe, which in my experience, have delivered. However, if you are going to be making these, I recommend this recipe from Fabrice Bendano, pastry chef at Adour Restaurant in Washington D.C.

I’ve been ignoring this space, mostly because I’m afraid that if I sit down to write, and I mean seriously write, that my fingers will be bleeding out the ink directly from my heart, that is to say, it will be too emotional, too all over the place, too real. In journalism, you’re told to never put yourself in the story - this isn’t about you, they tell you. So you take yourself out. You never editorialize and even when you think you aren’t, your editor will make sure to let you know that you are. You take yourself out of the equation. Whereas fiction writers or even non-fiction writers perhaps feel nothing particularly odd or even wrong with putting their feelings on paper or on a blog post, journalists find it hard to express themselves.

Let me rephrase that.

I find it hard to express myself because writing about news and events and other people is something I’m confident about. Writing thoughts about myself? Not so much.

So I’ve been ignoring this space. I have photos to upload, stories from Europe to share, even recipes, but I keep putting it off. Something isn’t right.

I can’t be free, because I don’t feel free.

I’m trying to find a remedy for it.

Oh boy.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. I know, I know. I said I would upload photos and insights in to my little trip abroad and I most certainly plan on still doing that, but something has been stirring inside ever since I got back. It was there before I left - a free falling feeling, like I’m aimlessly tumbling down the rabbit hole with Alice, afraid, paralyzed and anxious. Now with a 10-day hiatus in London, Dublin and Paris - the former which always has my heart and the latter which left me enchanted beyond repair, behind me, things are more intense, more magnified and as a result more bone crushingly painful.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve opened up a blank page on this blog with thoughts bubbling at my fingertips, only to close and delete it minutes later. Even though these thoughts are spilling over in my head, something stops me from writing them. I can’t shake this fear. I can’t shake this fear that has gripped me beyond writing a silly blog post on my own corner of the interwebs. It’s taken over my life really.

The reasons? Well there are many, but in the most simplest of terms, this isn’t where I wanted to be at this point in my life, and because of this simple statement, I feel the girl I knew, the one that slept, ate and breathed writing and journalism is frozen. Not slipping away, but frozen. It wasn’t meant to be this way for me, I tell myself, but when I graduated in 2007 with a B.A. in journalism, little did I know about the impending storm the publishing world had in store for me and everyone else who graduated with and after me.

Some days I’m ok, there are even days that I’m optimistic, but then there are the days when I feel so helpless and hopeless. I have these pent up ideas - articles and images and interviews flow through my head with nowhere to go.  Not a week goes by that I don’t hear about a newspaper scaling back or a magazine shutting its doors, aimlessly throwing more writers in this gigantic cesspool of unemployment. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about going back to school for a Master’s degree to learn something while I wait for things in the world of journalism to brighten up or at the very least, level out.

I feel myself drowning in doubt, wrestling with my thoughts, trying to figure out the right course of action, fighting the blues to carry on. I read an insightful article today about this very struggle - about the will to go on, despite the circumstances - how long do you care about being a writer? the article asked. How long (and from where) do you find the strength to keep pushing?

In many ways, I have no right to complain. I am not unemployed. I work in the publishing industry, albeit online and work so hard as a freelance journalist by night, all the while trying to run an online magazine, which I do voluntarily because a) I needed an outlet for writing and producing or else you would have found me sitting at Conrad’s diner at 3 p.m. in the afternoon with the old folk eating broccoli soup and counting sugar cubes before getting hauled off to an asylum and b) because I believe it’s something that that particular community needs and deserves. It’s a civil service if anything else. But I dream up ways every day of making money from my venture and living the journalism life I’ve always wanted. You know, the usual - writing for the Los Angeles Times, researching my novel, contributing to a plethora of smart magazines, perhaps even starting another blog, and before I realize, my daydream has reached the offices of the New York Times building, which might as well be literally in the clouds for me at this point.

Something has got to give.

In the time that I first began writing this entry and now, I’ve looked through all the photos from my trip, and each one carries such enormous weight with it, such amazing memories all tangled in each other in an almost two week adventure. Europe really changed me this time. It’s been two weeks since I got back, but my thoughts are still in London. I miss my boyfriend. I never talk about my relationship here, but I miss him terribly. The world seems calmer, easier to handle, when he’s by my side. I miss him. Who else would put some snow in a bowl with my name on it?

If there was a way to lay out the thoughts in my head in a straight line, they would circle the globe three times over. That was before I took my trip to Europe, and now that I’m back - it’s ten times worse. I hope to update with photos, observations, revelations and more, but suffice it to say that I had such an amazing time that I considered canceling my flight and now, three days later I still can’t get London, Paris and Dublin out of my head.