Can I touch you often?

Reemergence and gratitudes

Good morning all and welcome to the end of April.

Los Angeles is a tepid queen lately , all green and glistening but unsure of how warm she wants to keep me. I’m back to writing after a soft sojourn of healing. If I’m honest the emergency I experienced wasn’t a family matter but rather a personal one. But ofcourse it was. How can we all not be deeply affected by the world we are surviving in. We are atmospheric creatures, even when we don’t want to be.

The crux of my crisis is one I can imagine we all are feeling. The pinch of resources. The lack of good work. The soaring overhead prices. The cost of simply being human.

As the sole breadwinner of my household,  I’ve often straddled a line of chaos and surplus. Quite well. With flair I could even say. No safety net of a well established , born into the system of wealth kind of family. I was the American dream. A tiny self possessed child that grew up with nothing and made something of herself. A point of diminishing pride growing up.

I’ve been deeply blessed or rather atmospherically aligned to have been able to fend for myself since I was ten years old. And achieved a level of comfort that most moderately rich kids get to possess. But mine was not a well structured path of financial independence, it was a free fall of stumble steps that looked like flying from the right angle. I was a rebel. I didn’t care about money. Or rather I crafted an identity that was based on my reaction to the wealth I was raised in proximity too. Blind wealth. Meaningless items that from my tiny corner didn’t hold the promise of happiness everyone around so clearly belived in.

I didn’t play the game of success. My teenage brain was deeply offended by the ploys and plot devises used to garner higher wages and bright mega watt celebrity status. I wanted to be William fucking Defoe. Daniel fucking Lewis. So I built my own ship that allowed me to anchor where I pleased and leave the game of it whenever I felt the weather too damn much.

I’ve left Hollywood so many times it’s laughable. Like LOL rememberings in the middle of an elevator or traffic. But I always came back to it. Once a sailor always a sailor it seems. And it was so easy to live with little back when I was a teenager and when I was in my 20’s that I became highly agile in the feast of it and in the famine.

The economy is shit show now. But also my lone wolf vibes have happily changed. I’m head of a different kind of household. I have a child. And a house. And the kind of adulting expenses one could write strange poems about. And in the midst of a famine year,  I no longer can crash on couches or eat ramen noodles for days on end. I run a different kind of ship now. Happily. Well oiled. Soft. Reusable. A home of tending and care. But shit is getting hard out here.

But let’s herald the downshift for a moment. The crisis in need of cauterized heat. The gorgeous gift of losing the plot only to gain true catharsis. It’s the work of restarting that needs us all as much as we need it

Anyways I ramble and digress. It’s been a wild few months and only getting wilder. But I realized that I need to continue my path and not let the lean years scare me off of my divine purpose. I’ve got lots I want to share with you all. I’ve been scanning lots of old photos and building ten year plans on how best to meet these shifting times. Can we build and game plan together? All the while getting ready for films to come out and talk about and promote. The strangest activity and one that holds the most potential for change sometimes.

Much more to come. Thanks for sticking around.

Love

Jena

35 mm double exposure photo taken outside a field while shooting the hunger games