Tonight I Walked Alone down a Dark, Ghetto Alley...

To know me is to know that I relish words and phrases. Short ones, especially. Remember this ditty a couple years back? Click here.

I am known to underline them in books, magazines, cut them out, sometimes write them in the back cover of my written day planner - (No, I don't and will never have one of those Blackberry or Ipod planner gadgets, I will always write things out by hand.)

That is, unless I am typing thoughts in my blogs here or in the literally hundreds of bound pages I have of typed and bound journals that I've been keeping since the tender age of 14. I can admit, sometimes typing can be groovy for I can get a lot of those thoughts and phrases floating around in my head out quickly and not sloppily as when I used to furiously jot them down by hand.

For they all want to come out of my head and conscious, you see.

Wait - I feel some pouring out through my fingertips right now, let's see what I come up with:

- Like a tongue to a broken tooth: I've come full circle.

- Tonight I walked late at night down a dark ghetto alleyway - several times. Risking fate and danger? Well, stubbornly (more like 'stupidly') I've always done things like that. I remember back in college worrying my roommate, Diana, by walking a couple miles alone late at night with no street lights and many trees far up to the deserted track to go jogging. Or walking alone after midnight from my old studio in Hillcrest to the 24-Hour Fitness gym to work out. I remember a onetime gay friend and neighbor worrying about my taking walks or runs (before my bad knees) late at night alone and insisting I carry my phone with me and that he would be calling the police if I didn't return within 45 minutes. Even in Mexico, while living and studying there several months at the bright age of 21, I would naively return home alone the dark, tiny cobble-stoned alleyways ("callejones", they were called) late at night - even once getting followed and grabbed by some young psycho high on drugs whom I had seen follow me and stare at me from a distance for weeks. The ironic thing about tonight is that I even have pepperspray - but it broke off my keychain a few months back so I went at it alone in the alley tonight, clutching a key in between each knuckle shining brightly as a weapon - should the need arise.

- "Do you dance?" The tall, dark stranger asked as the Ragtime band played a jig. "You look like an Arabian princess..."

- I've noted before that sometimes my real-life dialogues play out in smart cliches like a carefully-scripted screenplay.

- "I hope I don't drive you to madness like Rodin did to Camille", read the back of the Parisian postcard featuring a photograph of the famous doomed lover's delicate nude statue with flowing tresses. I think both me and my boyfriend-at-the-time, Mark, knew full-well that his haunting words would inevitably come to fruition. Alas, being utter romantics and aching inside as artists are (and must be) we instead preferred to silently marvel and focus on how ironic, insightful and...let's face it: how painfully true his words could and did turn out to be (!)

- Te amo, mi Vida.
Te amo, Cobarde!

- If Love is a Red dress: well, then, do me a favor and, please, hang me in Rags.