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PAM NOLES on MIA WOLFF

In her e-mails there's often a line or two pirouetting bright and fabulous, yet completely disconnected from the rest of the narrative.

...I'm in the flora...is part of a line that went on to describe several colors and a butterfly in a conversation about scaring up illustration work.

...take the brooding and run ... is a bit that appeared in one of our exchanges about how the men in our lives were failing to appreciate the depths of our glory.

It's like a hiccup, these bits; a sudden jolting between mundane pleasantries and the earthy truth of what's actually going on. One is clear, the other often require thought before clarity hits.

I've come to look forward to these burped up bits almost as much as I relish getting a .jpeg attached of her...sensory attack....

At any given moment only part of Mia is present and actively engaged with the rest of us. An essential piece remains lurking behind at her core, gathering it all in, preparing to roar.

It may take the form of a non sequitor in a dashed-off note. More often it is a woman dancing naked in the river flowing past a deep black cave on a day of sepia and grey. A chandelier of squiggles delighting in freedom and light. A ladle overflowing with the stolen blood pooled inside an eviscerated woman, her rib bones stark white, her corpse draped with feathers.

I have felt like that. All of that.

Mia once beat me in a rhinestone war with an orange and red sunburst of necklace with matching earrings and a smile that said what a cute little necklace you've got there, dear. Was there a sale somewhere?

She'll deny it, but then she wasn't the one standing in the hallway trying to figure out how to say where on Earth did you get such lovely colored rhinestones without having that sound like You Won.

She bought the glasses of wine that night, towing me along as she worked the room and told people precisely what she thought and kept me amazed and laughing.

That's what I like, all of these things of dark and delight coming from a woman unafraid of the canvas in front of her, or of what she might bring forth upon it.

It's perfectly okay not knowing what the hell Mia is talking about.

Just wait for the pictures.

Then you'll get it.

PAM NOLES is a journalist and graduate of Clarion Writers Workshop. Her prose shorts have appeared in Andrew Vachss' Underground and Pulphouse magazine,. Currently reporting for an outpost of the Los Angeles Times she lives in southern California.