Category Archives: Adventures

Adventures, Experiences

The Bear & The Bird

7 Comments

I’m kinda-sorta-maybe-a-lot-in-love right about now. I would claim I don’t know how I got here, but I do, and this is where I’ll tell you, if you stay to read. This entry was harder to write than most simply because it’s a currently evolving story, not a finished chapter from my past. I hope I do this present experience justice.

It was just another Wednesday in June of 2012 when I spotted a clever post on Facebook credited to an online friend. The original poster was some cocky-looking guy named “Judd Weiss” who’d tagged my acquaintance. After some banter back and forth in the comments I explored Judd’s profile, pictures, and website (Hustlebear.com) and found we had mutual interests and mutual friends, so I sent him a friend request.

Over the next year I’ve certainly gotten to know him (I’d dare say more than most) – I met him in person a few weeks later at Freedom Fest in July. I brought a couple of people up to a little get-together in his hotel room, and next thing I knew I had seven people following me to a great little restaurant in Las Vegas. He sat beside me, and somehow as I drank glass after glass of Sangria, I missed the fact that I was sitting next to the next great love of my life. Continue reading The Bear & The Bird →

Adventures, Experiences, Past, Writing

The Move That Made Me

6 Comments

I sat at a computer all night trying to find the emotional zone that makes me tell a story. I got distracted by the typical aspects of the internet, and suddenly dawn arrived and I had no words yet, despite having spent three days telling myself it was time to write it. Finally, I grabbed a pack of clove cigarettes and a lighter and headed to my porch to watch the sun rise. I don’t even smoke, I just love the smell of burning clove, the way the tendrils of smoke rise off the ash at the end of the cigarette. I listened to birds sing and the neighborhood wake up. I started talking to someone who wasn’t there, I started telling them the story I was trying to tell in written word, and suddenly it poured out. I do this a lot. I tell it like I’m a character in a movie, like every dramatic scene that’s quiet in which a character tells another the truth. Dramatic pauses, a drag from a cigarette and thoughtful sighs. It makes it so much more artful, and suddenly those spoken words travel down to my fingers and allow me to walk back inside and type them out. It’s always this damn cigarette that brings it out.

Three years ago, on Memorial Day weekend of 2010, I left New England for my new life in Los Angeles. I was twenty-two and ready for an adventure. Many friends confessed confusion as to why I would leave, and why I’d choose Los Angeles, a city I only knew three people in, a city so much different than where I was from. Once I moved, and still to this day, I get asked by people in LA why I chose to move there.

I often laugh and say, “it all started with a boy”. Continue reading The Move That Made Me →

Adventures, Experiences, Past, Travel, Writing

Love (Found & Lost) Along the Road

5 Comments

So, the context provided in the entry before this one should explain that I’d followed love to a strange set of life-decisions. After having planned for over a year to move from Boston to Los Angeles, I finally did, and a year later I left to drive haphazardly across the country. Because of a Boy. Seriously, read that damn entry first.

So I left Los Angeles on June 3rd. It was very hard to do. My stuff was in storage, my birds were in their travel cage, there was less money in my bank account than I’d hoped, and I was very, very, nervous. I had just moved to LA a year before. I’d been so excited to start my life there. I kept looking at my favorite restaurants, favorite haunts, thinking to myself that I’d be back in two months, that I’d just settle right back in, hopefully bringing the Boy back with me.

The only way I was able to leave was by reminding myself I’d be back soon. Reminding myself that I had an adventure to go on, and that I’d be home again before I knew it. That the time would fly by.

So I drove to Las Vegas. I checked into my hotel room at The Artisan, a hotel I’d stayed at many times before and have stayed at many times since. I spent the next two weeks working – booking tables, selling bottles, hosting parties, Go-Go dancing, bar-tending private parties, gambling even, all cash and quick. The plan was to make as much money as I could fast, and to head East.

A few days before my expected leaving date, I met Ghost. Ghost has a real name, but I don’t feel like using it, as few people know it and by keeping it close I feel it makes him still belong to me in some way, even though I’m giving away this story.  Continue reading Love (Found & Lost) Along the Road →

Adventures, Experiences, Past, Travel

The Context (Leading up to the Summer of 2011)

5 Comments

Two years ago, I was in a very different space. So different, in fact, that I can barely recall it, so I flip through journals and pictures and try to reassemble the jumble of memories. I loved a Boy who lived 2,000 miles away from me, and I struggle to remember why. I try to remember kisses and adventures on chemicals in a forest land in upstate New York where we found one another among the clutter of New Age festival wildness.

Two years ago, I packed my life up and drove across the country for three months. That’s the story I’ve been wanting to tell, but before I do, I have to explain why I did, which is a story in and of itself. So there are few entries to read, and they’re autobiographical nonsense of a girl in her early 20s who seems to make a lot of life-altering decisions for boys. But these experiences, for all that they twist me around and make me run off on crazy paths in alternate directions, they’ve really shaped who I happen to be.

So, I guess we’ll back up to July of 2010, when I flew from my home in Los Angeles to New York for an annual hippie festival I’d been attending for years. It was already set to be a wild adventure – I flew out with clothing, a sleeping bag and a pillow, but no tent. I had no room for one in my baggage and decided I knew so many people at the festival that I would find someone to let me share their tent. It was a crazy idea, I’ll admit, but I love those kinds of situations. I have always made the best of not knowing what comes next, and Brushwood is a real home for me, filled with friends of my parents, friends of mine, former lovers, and lovers yet to be discovered. Continue reading The Context (Leading up to the Summer of 2011) →

Adventures, Experiences, Modeling, Photography, Writing

A Valentine

5 Comments
Photograph by Judd Weiss.

So I love. I’ve had so many great loves, so many butterflies and wide-eyed moments of trying and failing and hurting and giving. I’m not afraid to feel, not afraid to enjoy and embrace, but profoundly appreciative of how rare I find those sparks and subtle wants to please and need.

Things are great sometimes, with cuddles and kisses and irresistible trysts. I’m rather non-possessive and attentive and affectionate and all of these things come naturally and preemptively for the right person, the right dynamic. I’m passionate and careful – with my heart and others’.

I try to be the best for someone, the best that I can be. People deserve the best from one another, and I love the song in my soul that serves to remind me I deserve someone who inspires the best of me.

Maybe love is for a short time, or a long time, or a lifetime. In this instance it is, so far, six months of laughter and dreams and adventures and late-night stir-frys, and reflecting on the distance we’ve come and the hurdles we’ve climbed and the things we might wish to do. Six months thus far, and if this were as far as it went it’d be perfect as it was, and if it continues, it’s perfect as long as it lasts. We learn from one another, we give and we hold and we provide safe space to grow and be, tender and gentle, dominant and submissive, and everything, anything, together. It’s not exclusive, it doesn’t have to be, it lacks the resentment I tend to find in binding myself to one, and yet there is no disrespect, just compassion and courtesy, trust and openness. I’m very grateful for it, tremendously so.

I don’t grasp at love, fleeting as it can be. I just bask in it.

I’ve got so much love to give, to share — I love you, Valentines. All of you. And him.

Adventures, Experiences, Work

My City of Sins

6 Comments
Photo by Judd Weiss.

I live in the notorious Las Vegas, Nevada. I first visited this city in 2010 on my way to Los Angeles. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it over the past three years. I began working here in 2011, and moved here in January of 2012. As of February of 2013, I’m about ready to leave.

People ask me what I think of Las Vegas. When people diss it, I rush to defend it, and when people gush about loving it, I shrug and add my negative pieces. I’m leaving, right? I must hate it here; but that’s not true. It’s an awesome city and I love it, but I can’t stay here. This isn’t home. Continue reading My City of Sins →

Adventures, Experiences, Modeling, Photography, Tattoos

Ink #5: Serotonin

1 Comment

Serotonin, or 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) is a monoamine neurotransmitter.

It regulates a number of functions within the body, but my largest interest in it is how approximately 10% of serotonin in the body is synthesized in serotonergic neurons of the central nervous system, where it regulates mood, appetite and sleep, as well as affecting cognitive functions of memory & learning.

Popularly, serotonin is thought to contribute to feelings of happiness.

A dear friend of mine (of nearly 20 years) has the above image tattooed on her forearm. She and many other friends of mine have struggled with depression. I’m immensely thankful in my life that I have always seemed to have enough serotonin, even in the days when I would experiment with various chemicals which would cause my body to release more (and can be problematic for those who do not produce enough).

I spend a lot of time around people who are taking substances which affect their serotonin receptors.

As my dear friend went to a tattoo shop here in Las Vegas to get a new tattoo following a tremendous heartbreak (in October of this year), I began speaking with the other artist in the shop that day, and within a few hours had decided to get my own serotonin molecule, for a variety of the reasons I’ve mentioned above.

In December I was in Los Angeles, and Judd Weiss and I did a photo shoot, which included a number of shots of my ink.

Photo by Judd Weiss.
Photo by Judd Weiss.

Tattoo #5. Done by Brett at Redemption Tattoo in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Eventually each tattoo I have will be explained and pictured on this blog. Today was the day for serotonin.

Adventures, Experiences, Travel

The Place in My Heart for San Francisco

1 Comment

Half-written blog posts litter my “drafts” folder. It’s not like I don’t write, I just never write enough on one subject to feel it deserves to be posted on my blog, so it ends up being a post on Facebook or a comment. This habit needs to stop, this blog is a place for my collected thoughts, but it’s not collecting anything but dust lately. Virtual dust.

I just spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Boston and New Hampshire with my family and friends back East. After eight days, I flew from the East coast back to the West, but instead of my residence of Las Vegas or my home-of-the-heart, Los Angeles, I came to San Francisco for a little vacation from my vacation. I’m being hosted by a sweet-hearted lover and am enjoying the city by way of Vespa and BART.

It’s funny – I’ve been to this city a number of times over the past several years, and also visited as a child, and I’ve always liked it, but I’ve never loved it. Continue reading The Place in My Heart for San Francisco →

Adventures, Burning Man, Experiences, Travel

Burning Man 2012

3 Comments

I left Black Rock City exactly two weeks ago. That’s enough decompression for now, time to share some of the experience. This is by no means all-encompassing – so much occurred that I have no words for, so much exists only there, and everybody’s experience is completely different. This was mine.

I’ll start with the basics: Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada. For event details, I’d refer you to Wikipedia or the official website. I was attending for the first time, with a number of veteran Burners. My camp was primarily friends of mine from Los Angeles, and we were a registered theme camp called Steampunk Saloon. We had a pretty badass promotional flyer designed by the even more badass Art Lazaro.

steampunksaloon

Now, as one of my favorite first-burn blog entries already tells it: Civilization as we know it has ended and 50,000 survivors came out to the desert to throw the biggest party the world has ever seen. This is the Black Rock Desert. There was nothing here. Hundreds of people showed up pre-event to start making the skeleton of the city, complete with road signs, greeter booths, Center Camp and lots and lots of Porta-Potties.  By the way, dear people, some of whom I actually know, THANK YOU, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Continue reading Burning Man 2012 →

Adventures, Character, Experiences, Past, Pets, Travel

The Birds

2 Comments

I have two small parrots in the passenger seat of my car for this trip across the country.  When I tell people that, they tend to look at me like I’m crazy.  Where will I keep them when I stop on the trip?  Aren’t they loud?  Won’t they fly away? Who the hell brings two parrots on a cross-country drive?

A bird-mama does.

I have given up custody of these dear children of mine once since I’ve had them.  A painful nine months where I simply could not have them due to my housing situation.  It was hard.  I didn’t see them the entire time because I didn’t want to feel guilty saying good-bye every time.  They were in good, capable hands.

Since I got them back – fourteen days has been my limit.  The longest I will tolerate being away from them.

When I was a kid, I wanted a pet, and my mother told me I was allergic to cats and dogs (not true, different story).  So we got me a pair of budgerigars.  Small birds, colloquially known as “parakeets”.  Two turned into four, and my interest in birds grew, so I slowly acquired more – bigger each time. Continue reading The Birds →