I wasted many years steeped in a bitter hate of myself. No matter which way I looked at me: I did not fit in. Anywhere. Too little. Too much. (Somehow simultaneously.) Too weird. Too black sheep. I spent many years vainly attempting to escape myself. Thus, a little wonderer becomes a little wanderer.

“Wherever you go, there you are,” my uncle (a ceramics artist-now gone from this world) warned before I left on my first wild hare of a trip to Russia at age 18.

He was right. There I am. Wherever I go. And I have been to hell and back. Routinely. Like a sick commute.

But I found that I can turn the worst of times into the best of stories. Or at least a solid gold joke. Cosmically, lo I play the Fool, I rise as the Magician.  

And, truly, I am the love of my life. I am the person of my wildest dreams. And my dreams are only growing more feral, as my love blooms everywhere I look.

handmade – no label vintage acid flower print halter dress, $3 (ReStyle thrift store) | Dovecote pink flower silk scarf, $55 – end of year sale (Rifle Paper Company) | Kenneth Cole strappy wedges, $7 (Serendipity Boutique)

Cheep it to where the Mayan women played en la playa.