I love e.e. cummings. I have since I was 18. This poem, which I could never fully grasp, has been winding it’s way through my heart all day. My heart is the foot I lead with, by the way. Some people are great with their heads, their minds… I am all sensory. Seeing you, hearing you, touching you, smelling you. This is how things in the world are made real to me. I need this to be real, whatever it is to be. since feeling is firstwho pays any attentionto the syntax of thingswill never wholly kiss you; wholly to…

Sometimes, when I assist my amazing designer friend Ming Wong, part of my job is to shop for costumes. Right now we’re working on West Side Story for the Randolph Young Company, which is a group of incredibly talented teenagers. I LOVE West Side Story. I can’t explain it, but I’ve loved it since the first time I saw the film. I think it’s the music, or maybe the dancing gang wars. At any rate, despite the fact that this show will eat up my entire February social life, I’m looking so forward to it. So tonight, as I’m in…

cat·a·lyst (ktl-st)n.play_w2(“C0153900”) 1. Chemistry A substance, usually used in small amounts relative to the reactants, that modifies and increases the rate of a reaction without being consumed in the process. 2. One that precipitates a process or event, especially without being involved in or changed by the consequences: This word is frequently used in association with me by members of the opposite sex. I believe it has been repeatedly used incorrectly. Whatever process or events I may precipitate, I am never, ever left unscathed. In fact, I wish I were a catalyst sometimes. I could waft through someone’s world like…

As I’m waiting for the timer to ding, I’m perched on the edge of my seat, Toulouse snoring loudly and tucked in beside the laptop. Perched on the edge of my seat. Are you listening? I ran this by my brother, because he knows things about your chromosome. He says you are probably running game, which I already knew, but that it sounds like it comes from a genuine place of hurt. Who among us has NOT been hurt? Who isn’t terrified to meet a new gaze directly? To peel off the layers and show someone your muffin top, or…

My heart feels like an 8 x 11 sheet with one too many typos, snatched from the machine, crumpled into a hard, angry ball and tossed in the general direction of the waste paper basket, which it has narrowly missed and has instead landed with a faint thud on the broadloom beside your old sneakers.