A Can of Sandy Sunshine
Scrolling down to the bottom of the landing page to Swollen Appetite, you’ll see a special section named Sandy’s Drunk Poetry Corner.
As reckless and in constant motion as I was in my twenties and thirties, I somehow held onto a stack of journals, photos and cassettes I’d mixed with my poetry and song demos. That work was my attempt to find the real me. The me who was confused and chaotic, who dug deep – so deep I tunneled out and fell off the face of the earth to some better place.
At the age of 29, I fell in love with my voice on a microphone. It was a cheap plug-into-a-boombox microphone. I laid down fresh tracks of poetry, and listened back in amazement at who I was becoming. At the age of 61, I’m doing it again - a mirror image of myself except now I am recording an audio book version of Swollen Appetite. And just like before, I have fallen in love with my voice on the microphone. I’ve been listening to Michelle Williams read Brittany Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me and Gina Gershon read her memoir, How I Found My Pussy and Lost My Mind for guidance and inspiration.
When I was a little kid, there was a dime store across A1A from my Grandma’s pink cinder block beach house in Cocoa Beach. Barefooted, I’d scurry across the hot pavement and roam air-conditioned aisles holding up and analyzing the silly tourist souvenirs on the shelves: plastic gator keychains, NASA tee shirts, and flamingo pink sun visors with green plastic brims. My favorite souvenir was the can filled with Florida Sunshine. Such nonsense that weighed next to nothing and I giggled at the inventor's genius.
Writing and recording a memoir about the five most transformative years of my personhood is like taking the lid off a can of Florida sunshine. What’s there? Why package it? Who in the world would want a token of their time spent with me? I get embarrassed, thinking I’m a narcissist but also know there’s something very worth sharing about my story.
Billy Chenowith from Six Feet Under… That's the thing about Narcissus, it's not that he's so f***ing in love with himself, because he isn't at all, he f***ing hates himself. It's that without that reflection looking back at him... he doesn't exist.
I check my reflection in words and store windows not only because I’m vain and insecure, but because I need reassurance that I am still here. I’ve used those old journals, photos and cassettes to help me remember the woman in San Francisco in the 1990s not because I hate her, but because I love her and I was too sick to take care of her. The pages of the memoir dig a tunnel out of the soul-sickness of alcoholism and at the end of that trip, drop the reader off with a parting gift: a can of Sandy Sunshine.
