great Q&A featuring Lucy Liu & Lawrence Shou following a screening of the powerful, deeply moving Rosemead, which opens this weekend-Go see it!...As a foster kid/adoptee & former immigration lawyer, this film resonated for me as a powerful reminder of the parallels between foster kid/adoptee trauma & immigrant trauma, which I've spent the past decade exploring in my debut memoir Killing Justice, which we are currently adapting for the screen...so kudos to Lucy Liu for creatin

my safety poem for last night's aim4theheartorg heart sessions urbanpoetry workshop

hanging out with the co-creators of the truly transcendent visual album masterpiece Songs from the Hole, Director/ Producer Contessa Gayles, Writer/Music Artist/ Protagonist JJ’88, and Producer/Music Producer richie reseda, featuring a truly transformative vision of how art truly saves lives, & their 3 part collaboration reminds me of similar transcendent, transformative visions, including Ramell Ross' rapturous adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys & Barry Jenkins' wo

Love this darkly comic short film ,The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong, which, like my debut memoir Killing Justice, wrestles playfully with questions about the price of belonging, the repetition of unhealed trauma, and the role of humor in helping with the healing of trauma.

my renewal poem for Aim4the HeArt Heart Sessions urbanpoetry workshop last night...next week's topic is safety ...hope u can join us

poster for Joachim Trier's truly transcendent masterpiece Sentimental Value, which I got to see Monday night at the DGA, which, like my debut memoir Killing Justice, revolves around themes of intergenerational trauma & the healing power of art... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKbcKQN5Yrw

Hanging out with Jia Zhangke, after a screening of his masterpiece Ash is Purest White. Among the greatest filmmakers working today, Chinese master Jia Zhang-Ke is the foremost cinematic chronicler of the vast changes that have transformed his country over the last half century in its transition from communism to a globalized, increasingly market-based society. Beginning his career as an underground filmmaker working without state approval, he first attracted attention for hi

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear...I don't know what I think until I write it down. Joan Didion This is also a central theme of Hamnet  & my debut memoir  Killing Justice.

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this truly transcendent masterpiece by Chloe Zhao, which powerfully portrays intergenerational trauma and wondrously portrays the healing power of art, as does my debut memoir Killing Justice... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYcgQMxQwmk

A central theme of my debut memoir is captured in Frederick Buechner's definition of vocation, that " The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.", as prior to my arrest in the fall of 2009 for my friend's fraud, I had NEVER asked myself where my deep gladness could be found, but had ONLY asked myself "what does the world hunger for".

Love these parties...As my friend Dan hosts couchsurfers, & they are some of the coolest people I've ever met...& so I'm hoping many of them will become part of my team as we create the screen adaptation of Killing Justice, especially since its working title is currently Orphan Rising, & hopefully Dan can also host our Film Premiere Party for Orphans as well!

D u a l i t y 3 From                                                         To Double-Minded & Destructive                  Unworthy & Unloveable                          Tragicomic Troubadour           Abandoned & Abused                              Lost Lawyer                                               Resiliently Radiant      Isolated & Infantilized                               Interdependently Immortalized           Sentenced to Stillness                             

Duality      2 Damaged & Deranged                    &       Daringly Different Underground & Unmoored          &         Unpredictable & Uncontainable Abandoned & Afraid                    &         Affirmed & Affirming Lost & Lazy                                  &         Liberated & Laconic Insecure & Incomplete                 &         Interdependent & Inquisitive Traumatized & Terrified              &         Torn apart & Toughened Youthfully Yielding                  

Duality Double-minded, DoubleSpeak, Doubling Down Uprooted, Unmoored, Unstable & Unconscious Angrily Absent Lost Lawyer Insanely Idealistic Terrifyingly Trusting Youthfully Yearning

hanging out with Claire Goh, lead singer of Paper Citizen, during a wonderful Friendsgiving event in Thousand Oaks that she headlined Monday night, along with Songs for Sabotage and Reliza...and given all the parallels between adoptee and immigrant trauma, Claire is hoping to find inspiration from my debut memoir Killing Justice to contribute some music for the soundtrack for the screen version

hanging out with Hikari, writer/director of the wildly entertaining, deeply moving, truly transcendent Rental Family, after last night's Film Independent screening at AMC Century City, which resonated with SO MANY of the themes of my debut memoir Killing Justice, especially Abandonment, Belonging, & Forgiveness... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0pqP6ClcE8... Hikari’s Rental Family is an ode to all the people out there who are lonely, grieving and in pain, a lesson on how h

“One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

hanging out with Nia DaCosta, writer/director of the wildly entertaining, deeply moving Hedda, after last night's LACMA screening at the DGA...the film does an amazing job in externalizing Hedda's rage, complexity, and messiness, especially with the use of breath sounds in its magnificent score, as I also hope to do in adapting my debut memoir Killing Justice for the screen... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3lgD59KrTw

hanging out with Shai Carmeli-Pollak, writer/director of the powerful, deeply moving The Sea, after this morning's screening at Soho House...The Sea isn't just another drama-it's a film that stays with you long after the credits roll. What makes it special is its courage to tell a deeply human story set against one of the most complex backdrops in the world. The film flows like the sea itself-sometimes calm, sometimes stormy-but always pulling you in. The performances are raw

Guillermo Del Toro at a Q&A following a screening of his truly transcendent masterpiece, which immerses us in a gothic universe where beauty, horror, and fantasy coexist on a single plane, as the theme of finding humanity in that which many find monstrous is one that del Toro seems drawn to, so watching him tackle Frankenstein is quite thrilling, and he does it masterfully, even going for an emotional and spiritual catharsis, and miraculously pulling it off, while the father/