Cheesy Potato Breakfast Tacos

Cheesy Potato Breakfast Tacos

12/16/2025

I made the above breakfast exactly a week ago, but I am just now getting around to finishing this post. It is the holiday season, so I am deep into preparations for our annual holiday gathering on the 24th. Along with that I somehow get a number of new client inquiries in the month of December that suggests something, but what that is I don't know. 

Funnily, I have begun my own individual work with a new therapist just this month. I chose him because of his training in somatic (body) work and also EMDR (trauma), as well as his familiarity with Jewish and Buddhist wisdom traditions and thoughts. I have met with him three times, and so far so good. 

My most recent session found me recanting my coming out story when I was 17 (to my mother) and I was surprised to find myself in tears during the retelling. I think it was just the realization that this was the moment I concluded that nobody, even those who love me, can hold what I have to share. Is it any wonder that I became a writer? Writers share their world with others who don't even need to be in the same room. 

Keshav told me that he is hoping to find a therapist of his own soon, and I support him in this. In the meantime, he said he really liked the breakfast tacos, so score! I think he is wearying working in the ER, and who could blame him. There are types of caregiver work that take more than they give, and I suspect that working in an emergency room is one of them. Especially here in Los Angeles, where the level of suffering reflects the cultural illness. It can feel, at times, impossible to cope. This causes many, understandably, to turn to drugs. 

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I have been re-watching one of my favorite television shows, High Maintenance. I discovered this show when it was a web series about a pot salesman known simply as "The Guy", who biked around New York City selling weed products out of his backpack. I loved it because it was a "slice of life" show about people, and it was so well written that I found myself invested in the character's lives within minutes. 

It made me think, "Who are the people in the buildings that I walk by every day?" Lives being lived mere feet from where I live my life, and yet we are mostly unaware of one another. What would happen if we could see into their apartments, into their lives? 

High Maintenance was picked up by HBO and made into a proper series, running for about four seasons, I think. It just got better with the longer episode length. The most recent episode I watched featured "The Guy" recovering at home from a broken arm he sustained after a woman ran in front of his bike, causing him to crash into a parked car and flip over (thankfully this has never happened to me).

Since The Guy has nothing to do but recover following the injury, he decides to eat some magic mushrooms he has stored in a baggie in his fridge. For the rest of the episode he wanders around the city and we get to experience his perspective of the world while high as a kite. It was a very believable portrayal of being high.

I have done mushrooms a handful of times, with mostly positive results. The first time was decades ago at Burning Man, and they made me feel free of the "baggage" that had been weighing me down most of my life. Since then I have done them "on occasion", but you have to be careful to not eat too many or the trip will turn on you.

The most recent time I did them was a year ago with my friend Mel, and we were coincidentally in New York City. I remember that we chose to eat them while walking on the street, and I felt them hit me shortly afterwards, immediately realizing that I had probably eaten too many. 

We made it back to our hotel, but it was a struggle! Knowing I wanted to avoid a freak out, I took a shower and tried to ground myself, and it mostly worked. By that time the "shrooms" hit Mel as well,  and I realized that we had to get on the same page if this trip was going to work for us. 

Fortunately, we were able to align with each other, and we soon realized, while looking out our hotel window at a neon sign on the building next door, that we were hallucinating. The building the sign was on started to "sway", not in a bad way, but almost like it was dancing. We both saw it. And it felt magical--as though we were seeing the world through a hidden portal of perspective that one can only see when there is an opening. It was beautiful, I have to say. This is when the shrooms started "working" for us.

The next morning they had worn off and we woke to buildings outside the window that were definitely not dancing. The "portal" had closed. 

I do not believe that buildings can dance, but that is how we saw the buildings when high. I believe that our minds were moving the buildings as a way to give life to them. While an experience like this can cause some to question reality, it just makes me realize that though reality is consistent, the way it is perceived by each person can differ wildly, or even sometimes align. Every once in a while we need to see the world through a magical lens. For some, that lens is religion. For others, it is drugs.

*

I sometimes wonder why I did not smoke pot in my 20's. Especially since, back in the 80's, pot was really fun, not the blast-into-space shit available now. I did cocaine then, but only when given to me, and I have to say that was pretty fucking great. I never felt I had to go out and buy any myself though. For me, drugs were like a really great chocolate cake--you would be foolish to pass up a slice if offered, but you aren't going to eat the whole cake or have a slice everyday, would you? A slice every now and then makes life feel special at times. 

I do less drugs now, mostly because I don't know where to get any, but I do enjoy pot from time to time. It is legal now, so I can get it from any number of friendly neighborhood stores. While I sometimes wish I were one of those people who can use pot everyday and be super cool about it, I am definitely not one of those people. I have spent too much of my life facing life head-on, which makes getting stoned an escape for me rather than a way to cope. I can cope just fine, but occasionally I need to escape the coping. 

Perhaps this is why the holiday season is my season to shine. It is both an escape and a way to cope. And I don't even have to get stoned to experience it as such. I feel fortunate that this is the way I experience the holidays. Most people want to escape the holidays, while I want to escape into them. 

I do sometimes wish we lived in a culture we didn't want to escape from at all.