So much of any year is flammable. Where does it go? A slide  show of images out of time and in no particular order.

Living with Brian and Carolyn on College Avenue. Going to CCAC. Eating ramen every day. The night I met Mark, 24 years ago at the East Bay Express party. Learning to write under Chiori Santiago. Driving through San Francisco delivering copies of Metier, our art magazine. Drinking. Vomiting. Doing lines of coke. Going home with strangers. Black patent leather flats. The Christmas I went to San Miguel De Allende with my family, how my sister and I got drunk and gave all of our jewelry away to the men at the bar. My brother’s outstretched hand to collect the rings at the end of the night. The Chrysler sales man car I drove for nearly 4 years when I sold books for Simon and Schuster, not being able to get on the 7am flight from Oahu to Kona to sell to the bookstore in Kailua because I was spinning and hung over.

The summer I sang in a band on Martha’s Vineyard and took a taxi ride with James Taylor. All the fights in the car with my Mother on the way back to college, my Father dying, making books, seeing my byline, being on the radio, my in-laws horrified because they  didn’t like the article on pinching, thought it made my father-in-law look bad, grabbed every copy of Glamour from their retirement community store and drove them to a trash bin in another town. Taking my husband’s name, marriage counseling, losing rings, too many to count, Zoe getting sick, counting out prednisone, the Canyonlands, Moab, Zion, Joshua Tree, the colors blue and green.

Doctors, telling the truth, buying a house, inheriting money, losing money, writing checks, buying boots, wearing pads, loving men, burning incense, learning to make carrot ginger soup, consulting psychics, sitting in PTA meetings, buying new computers, playing racquetball, becoming a minor racquetball queen, making and losing friends, smoking cigarettes, going to the market stoned, quietly lusting after other people’s husbands, building fires, putting out fires, taking baths, having babies, wiping poop, stepping in dog shit, defending myself, learning to say no, spending too much money on food and clothes, taking high heels back to Nordstrom, trying to tell the truth,  breaking dishes, adding chocolate to chili, words with friends, stretch marks, candy necklaces and coffee, repainting the walls, Gorilla glue and sleepy time tea.