Spring Hodge Podge

Sorry, y’all, I did not mean for an entire month to fly by without posting. The offline stuff definitely got in the way of the online stuff, and apologies to subscribers both recent and those from the good ol’ days of last year who stuck around. And can you believe it: my one-year Substack-a-versary is next month! Substack is a noisy place, and I am grateful you’re here.

Usually, I have a thought, a theme, a single, linear story to share but this time it’s a random list of things happening, which seems appropriate for the spring equinox, right? Not one tulip pushing through the cold, crusty, winter-heavy earth, but tulips and daffodils and crocuses and all life in all its many forms pushing up everywhere with zero consideration—just a drive to go, go go. This post is the opposite of a coordinated, geometrically provocative French garden and instead more like the seeds a bunch of fifth graders dropped last fall that’s now unexpectedly sprouting up: beautiful and messy. I wish I could call it braided narrative but that’s too generous. It’s simply stuff going on.

Let’s begin.

Cuckoo for Cacao

What I love about L.A. is that this city will turn anything into a circle and a ceremony, and most likely charge an admission fee. Wellness is big biz in LA LA Land. Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-circle or anti-ceremony; this Friday, I return to the Women’s Fire Circle, which I love. What’s trending here—and this city is obsessed with trends and healing and monetizing healing—is something so old it’s new again: cacao ceremonies, or what the Los Angeles Times delightfully dubbed “Ayahuasca-Lite.”

Some are happening right on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, which has been crowned the “most coolest block in America” though having spent a fair amount of time in Venice, I’m gonna respectfully disagree. Sure, Abbot Kinney is BoHo chic, but it lacks the grit I like that’s so bountiful elsewhere around Venice and Venice Beach and in downtown L.A. Cacao ceremonies are a thing, and involve sitting in circles or small groups and quietly sipping Central or South America-farmed cacao with intention while letting shit go, something we should all do every day whatever we’re drinking.

I haven’t yet attended a cacao ceremony. I’ve done fire circles, dance circles, and yeah, I dig a robust sound bath. I fully embrace L.A., this weird working class city of beaches and McMansions and wellness ceremonies. However, I pause a bit when we start putting everything under the wellness marketing umbrella, and yes, plant medicine falls into this category. It’s like slapping “Detox” onto an item and charging more for it, and while cacao ceremonies aren’t being marketed as detox spas—yet—there’s a cleansing vibe to it because here in L.A. we’re in a constant state of cleansing. This is where I raise an eyebrow to L.A.’s obsession with wellness trends. I don’t buy detox anything. I do buy a lotta lemons and drink a lot of hot lemon water, the OG detox and most likely, the cheapest. Is lemon water—with organic lemons—plant medicine? I have no idea. Maybe? Spin it any way you want. Cacao ceremonies are being promoted as plant medicine, and this is where I think “huh?”

I find the term “plant medicine” a bit cringy and wonder if it’s a reaction to America being a pill-popping, addicted, struggling nation. I don’t know. I firmly believe in the power of phytochemicals, which is why I also believe that not all plants are innocuous. I have allergies, carry an Epi-Pen and have broken out in hives in reaction to someone else’s skin products. I don’t do essential oils anywhere ever. They aren’t essential to me. Allergies change. A decade ago, I wasn’t allergic to bees and now I am, as well as hornets and wasps and who knows what else now. Can I go and safely sip some cacao at a ceremony without needing Benadryl? Maybe, possibly, hopefully, but I honestly don’t know. Do I want to pay $45-$50 for this experience? Not really. Should I use that money instead to fill my gas tank for my commute to work? Probably.

Fire circles cost nothing except a requested small donation towards the firewood. Dance circles cost around $25, usually to cover the expense of the studio rental and the DJ. A sound bath takes some skill and those cost more, ranging from $50 to $150, depending on the location and practitioner, though at my yoga studio, I can attend at no additional cost as part of my monthly membership. To sit in a circle with or without intention and drink hot chocolate–sorry, cacao–with strangers while breathing deeply—sorry, breathwork—amidst ridiculous tariff wars, inflation, stock market crashes and all the other turmoil America is in, is a wellness trend I might skip for now. There are new moon cacao ceremonies happening on March 29, my birthday, which is also the day of an eclipse in Aries (because if you live in L.A. you follow astrology like the weather). On that day, I’ll be terra firma, near my beloved Santa Monica Pier eating gluten-free cake from my favorite bakery in Venice, no cacao for now.

If I really, really want to eventually hop on this cacao wellness bandwagon in a less pricey way, for $25, I can purchase Ecuadorian ceremonial cacao and sip solo with intention at home in the comfort of my pajamas, or if I crave a community vibe, I can invite a few friends over, pass the cup or cups, and we can talk about what’s on our minds, which then really goes back to my 1980s Girl Scout campouts and sleepovers when we drank Swiss Miss and kinda did the same thing. Amirite???

Actually, that sounds perfect right now given all the chaos: friends gathered around a small campfire on the beach, and we sip some commercial hot cocoa that likely has too much sugar and not enough goddess divine in it but it’s community, we’re connected and isn’t that what wellness is really about—taking care of each other in this way and not monetizing a practice that people have been doing with or without intention for centuries?

That One Time Of Year I Don’t Declutter

People talk about spring cleaning but for whatever reason, spring is when I enjoy a small shopping spree. I love the winter holidays but I am not a big shopper at Christmas. Ask anyone who knows me: I constantly purge and am in a permanent budget-state-of-mind. I love thrift stores and $8 sweaters. I don’t gamble and have never bought a lottery ticket. I make red lentil lemon soup over and over and over, which does get boring but saves moolah. I cancelled DoorDash and deleted a bunch of subscriptions I wasn’t using. I wear boots I bought five years ago and scarves I bought when I was in my 30s. Yet every March, my birthday month, the wallet builds a little heat. Nothing crazy, but I’ll buy these earrings because I want some funky, beaded, fossilized-looking fish dangling from my earlobes, and I’ll buy daisy-shaped napkins for no good reason other than it’s spring, and I’ll buy discount vinyl because that’s my jam, and I’ll buy new socks because the old ones have holes. I also splurged on funky new plants and succulents–speaking of plant medicine. Plant stores are my candy stores, and this one in Marina Del Rey is my go to. I have seasonal affective disorder, and those barren months from November until April in the Northeast coupled with the complete lack of green really affected me. SAD symptoms feel like breathing mud. Yes, I’ve heard the stories about how winter helps the earth rest and get ready for spring, that winter is restorative.

Fuck that.

Here in L.A., roses and calla lilies bloom in January, and by March almost everything is blooming. I belong where life blossoms 365 days a year, so here I am, with my own external-not-so-internal approach to plant medicine; I don’t want to eat or smoke plants (I’m not counting salads, here). I want to admire them and be surrounded by as much green as possible. Perhaps this is why my March Madness involves all this emerging and abundance. I was born one week after the spring equinox and have been told more than once that I have “spring flower energy.” Spring is when I want more, more, and more, when I want to dance across my apartment complex or the beach or the grocery store and sprinkle rainbow fairy dust on everyone because it is spring and that is enough. This mood tapers off sometime in late April or early May when I come back to reality and put whatever is left of the rainbow fairy dust away for next year, but it’s a clockwork vibe that hasn’t skipped a beat so far. Spring is my new year, my harvest, my All The Things.

Happy Spring Equinox dear readers. Rainbow fairy dust sprinkled over all of you.

I Won Something!!!

As stated above, I’ve never bought a lottery ticket, but two weeks ago it felt like I won the lottery when around 11 PM on a Friday night, I received an email that I thought was spam. Turns out, I was the 2025 Nineteenth Annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Story of the Year Grand Prize Winner. As in The Prize. The Gold. The top story. Among all the submissions, this one got picked. People I don’t know voted for my piece, first published in a literary journal this time last year, and sent me a check for $1,000. The truth behind this piece is that I wrote it in a few hours feeling broken-hearted about a gazillion things in early 2024. Some births are easy, others are painful and take forever. This essay slid right out of me while I replayed Mazzy Star’s “California.” It became the first installment of my L.A. column for Panorama–a London-based literary journal that I encourage you all to check out–-and thanks to Solas, will appear in a printed anthology next year. I’m over the moon, which right now is currently in Libra because in L.A., mystical updates are just an app tap away.

Heartbreak is powerful energy. I wrote “It Can Be Beautiful For Everyone” expecting absolutely nothing except to feel less sad, and a year later, this happens. My cacao-free cup runneth over, and I’m beyond grateful. I love writing in second person; it’s active and intimate in a way that first person isn’t, and I’m extremely thankful for my Panorama editor, Matthew Webb, who allows me to go wide and weird. In an age of algorithm-driven, hyper-commercial content, his carte blanche approach is a huge gift that I do not take for granted.

P.S. We haven’t talked tunes in a while because I’ve been remiss in posting regularly. What’s on your playlists lately? I can’t stop playing Bad Company’s Seagull, which debuted in 1974. Maybe it’s how this song reminds me of long walks on the beach (no, really), and long drives out to the desert, and seeing seagulls sometimes around gritty downtown Los Angeles or the grocery store parking lot, and how the plane takes off from LAX and circles over the Pacific. This song also transports me back to being a teenager and growing up in rural upstate New York, driving chunky, gas-guzzling cars when gas cost around a dollar, and blasting classic rock back when these singers were barely middle-aged and middle-aged seemed old then. Seriously, I listen to this one song and see all of these memories play all at once, my then and my now finding each other in the thick of these beautiful chords. May we all have a favorite song like this that ties the various chapters in our lives together.