Love and Squalor in Los Angeles

One day soon, I’m going to write a collection of essays, ala Roland Barthes’...

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:54:51 -0700

One day soon, I’m going to write a collection of essays, ala Roland Barthes’ Mythologies, where he analyzes, among other things, wrestling on TV. It’s going to be called “What’s Wrong With Us?” Ideas for essays:

-deconstructing familiar roommate relationships on Fox’s NEW GIRL

-parsing the OOTD phenomenon vis-a-vis poetic license and rubbernecking

-the essence of YOLO

-that person on Facebook who has everything go wrong at once all the time and can’t tell help but post a status update as they’re on the way to the hospital in an ambulance their house is being simultaneously foreclosed upon

I'm Such A Fucking Mess

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:25:00 -0700

Not to brag, but I think my sister and I keep a pretty clean house. Our kitchen floors are, at least 4 days out of the week, good enough to eat off of. One of us vacuums every weekend (more often - and more thoroughly - my sister than me). We grew up in a household that emphasized making the place look good, feel good, for you, and for your guests. There’s a yellow sponge in the shower that I take to the grout every other night, after I was my hair.

But my room is a goddamn mess. I’ll go through phases where I’ll do thorough cleanings and purgings, but I can’t ever seem to get it to stay that way. I’ll organize my shoes into neat little lines on a Sunday, and by Thursday they’ll be unpaired and chaotic on my closet floor. The thing is that I’m a bit of a sentimentalist, a bit of a survivalist, a bit of a narcissist, a bit of a pragmatist. I never want to throw anything away, for fear that I might need it some day, or it might come back in style. I’ve kept every card my mother has ever sent me, including the ones that just say, “Here’s the new insurance card for your car. I hope you’re doing your laundry, bitch.” I always remember the excitement of going through the stuff that my grandmother had kept from my mother’s childhood and adolescence - her report cards, her prom photos, her yearbooks. I want to keep the relics from my past as well, so that someone might discover them, pour over them, like I did, like I like to do. Except that I don’t ever want to have kids.

What doesn’t help things is that I’m a chronic overpacker, whether it’s for work, for vacation, or for a weekend at Dusty’s. Sometimes I’ll show up at his house with four bags - one for work, one with clothes, one with gym clothes, one with more work. It’s hard living your life out of bags on the weekend, and it means that a lot of things are misplaced, or forgotten under Dusty’s bed, resurrected six months later when he himself does a deep cleaning. I can’t help it. I like to come prepared. I like to have options. I like to have choices when it comes to reading material, t-shirts, pens and notebooks.

The problem is that when you have a lot of stuff and you like to put it in different bags, or, in some cases, absentmindedly stuff the book you were reading in your bathroom cabinet, you rarely know where anything is. Last night, at midnight, I was tearing my bedroom apart looking for a tiny point-and-shoot digital camera that I haven’t seen or used in at least five months. I texted Dusty about it. He answered, “Have you checked in your twenty bags?”

I said that I had. But little does he know that I have thirty.

And then this morning, I realized that I was missing a ring that my sister had given me for Christmas - a beautiful ring made of pink gold and diamonds. I’d put it, along with two other rings, into a pouch in my gym bag last night. When I’d thrown my gym bag into my backseat after 37 minutes of serious cardio and iron pumping, I guess the rings had tumbled out. I found two. But the ring from my sister is still missing.

I wish that things didn’t mean so much to me, for two reason: one, that I wouldn’t have so much crap and clutter around me all the time, and two, that I wouldn’t miss and obsess about these things quite so much when something inevitably disappeared. I’ve tried sitting quietly, trying to psychically see, in my mind’s eye, where a tiny black camera could be sitting - in which purse, in which corner of my apartment, of Dusty’s room. And I’ve been saying silent prayers all morning that the ring from my sister, which means so much to me, isn’t gone forever.

In the grand scheme of things, I know that these items don’t mean as much as my health, my life, my mind. But I still mourn for them, and I will, tonight, practically dismantle my car to find the ring. And I’ll throw things I no longer want or need into big black garbage bags, to either be trashed or donated.

But then, if neither the ring nor the camera shows up, I’ll probably go buy myself another purse, to cheer me up.

Roughing It

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 07:48:00 -0700

When I was a kid, to save money and also to teach us that room service was not a travel necessity, my family often went camping for our summer vacations. We’d drive to Wyoming from New Jersey, and pitch a tent at various stops along the way. Or, we’d drive down to West Virginia and stay at one campsite for several days, during which time I developed a southern accent as well as an infatuation with a girl from South Carolina who had blond curly hair that I’d never seen on a human being before, only Cabbage Patch dolls.

In high school, I participated in several backpacking trips, going rock climbing and hiking through parts of the Appalachian trail and talking about our feelings around a fire. On one trip, the kids responsible for buying food bought packets of dehydrated entrees that, we realized one night after hiking ten miles, required butter and milk, none of which we had in the mountains. We ate peanut butter and jelly for three days.

I like camping. I like to imagine myself as a pioneer. Lewis. Or Clark. A rugged individualist. Thoreau. Kerouac. As a kid I spent hours in the backyard pretending to be one of the Boxcar kids, or a girl who’d lost her way on the Oregon Trail. There was a time, before security everywhere got tighter, that I carried a Swiss army knife with me wherever I went.

But I cannot pitch a tent.

Last summer, Dusty and I took a road trip from Los Angeles to Oregon. We’d borrowed a tent and a sleeping bag from a friend, planning to camp at least one night in order to cut down on our travel costs. We pushed hard our first day on the road, leaving LA at 5am, spending lunchtime in San Francisco, and arriving at a luxury RV park and campground in Ashland, OR, a little after 8pm.

We unloaded a car that was far from expertly packed as the skies darkened. Our tiny campsite was nestled between two larger plots occupied by RV’s. As I hauled the tent out of the back of my Yaris, a pile of books I’d brought for the trip (that I wouldn’t touch once) fell out onto the dusty ground. I could hear American Idol streaming through the portable television in the RV to our left. To our right, someone skyped with family back home. The park had WiFi, after all. And we had a lovely view of the pool, where sun faded swimming noodles floated idly, and the chain link fence that surrounded it reflected off the water.

The tent was a loaner from a friend, and we’d never set it up before. I opened all the doors of the car to shed some light on the stakes and ropes and multiple pieces of tarpaulin. I also used the light from my cell phone, but then became distracted with trying to get onto the Wifi to check my email and Facebook, since actual cell service was pretty terrible.

Dusty, on the other hand, raised by an Eagle Scout and, in general, pretty good at fixing things, strapped a small light to his forehead and, with his makeshift headlamp, used a large rock to pound the stakes into the ground. He instructed me what to lift and when, what to pull and how, and I failed miserably at every attempt. I couldn’t even competently nail a stake into the ground with my own large, smooth rock. I kept pounding but the stake got nowhere. At one point, he turned to me and said, “Do you understand what we’re trying to do here?”

This was our first substantial vacation together. I’d just lost my job. It was late, I was hungry, I couldn’t read my emails, and the question, “Do you understand what we’re trying to do here?” suddenly had greater heft than he’d intended.

I have spent so much of my life knowing exactly what was next. When I graduated from middle school, I went to high school. When I graduated from high school, I went to college. When I graduated from college, I got a job, and I started working, and I haven’t stopped since. Last summer was the first time in my life that there was some uncertainty about what was next - about what I was trying to do here, there, anywhere.

This January, I went for my annual woman’s exam. My doctor looked at my charts. ”You’re 28,” he said.

“Don’t remind me,” I moaned, trying to adjust my bra-less chest so I didn’t feel quite so unfettered.

“You have plenty of time,” my doctor replied. “You’ve got two years until we have the five year talk.”

The five year talk consists basically of my doctor warning me that by 35, my chances of getting pregnant will be greatly diminished, and if children are in my hypothetical late 30’s future, I should seriously consider freezing my eggs.

I harbor a slightly obsessive, absolutely frantic fear of turning thirty and not knowing what I’ve done with my life, not knowing what I will do, being too grey and too sterilized by too much work and not enough adventure to feel like I matter. I know that there’s no biological clock on creativity, but sometimes, in my darkest moments, as I rake my fingers through the patch of grey hair on the right front side of my scalp, I repeat the mantra in my head, “You have two years before the five year talk.” Although at this point, it’s more like a year and eight months.

Dusty is two years younger than me, which means that he has four years before the five year talk, and we all know for guys it doesn’t matter much anyway. He also has a much calmer nature when it comes to occupational pursuits. Since we’ve started dating, he has both relaxed me and energized me when it comes to my work. After a long hard day he grabs me a beer and will sit through the latest episode of New Girl. And when I say to him, “I think I want to change my website,” he figures out the coding in order to make it look exactly the way I want. When it came to pitching the tent, we were still a team, which meant that he was willing to carry some of my dead weight. After all, I was the one who had gotten us there, to Ashland, in the first place.

But not even Dusty could figure out how to affix the rain cover to to the top of the tent in Ashland. Which was all right, because once we laid down inside, we could see the entire sky from the top netting of the tent. And the sky in Ashland isn’t like a Los Angeles sky. In Ashland, it’s like you can see every star, every planet in the galaxy. It’s so bright and clear that it’s like you can reach up and grab anything you want.

The next morning, we took the tent down. By which I mean that Dusty deconstructed it and wrestled all pieces back into an unbelievably small bag while I played with a friendly golden retriever and scavenged for heart shaped rocks to send home to my mother, who collects them, along with baseball bats and old books. As we were about to leave, I noticed the two rocks we’d used as hammers sitting near the fire pit we’d never touched. I recognized them because of the scratches from the metal stakes. ”Hey look, our hammers,” I said to Dusty as I deposited them in my glove compartment. ”Just in case we run into trouble along the road, we can use them as blunt objects. Pets. Paperweights.” He regarded me skeptically but said nothing, and went back to his map.

When we got back from Portland, I started a new job. It took me a week to get the dead bugs washed off my car and about a month to fully unpack the vehicle. But for some reason, I’ve never remembered to take our rocks from Ashland out of my car. They’re still in my glove compartment, along with the bowtie that Dusty taught himself to crochet while I drove. But maybe they’re supposed to be where they are, in my car, reminding me that I might not always know what I’m supposed to be doing, but I should always be doing something. Besides, you never know when you’re going to need to pitch a tent somewhere. Then, those rocks will come in handy.

At The Phoenix, which is next door to Benihanas and across the street from Larry Flynt’s...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:17:47 -0700

At The Phoenix, which is next door to Benihanas and across the street from Larry Flynt’s Hustler building, you can get $3 drinks from 7-9 every night of the week. I like bargains. I’m also perpetually late to the party. Which is why Saturday found me sucking down drinks faster than I usually do in order to feel like I’d really gotten the happy hour deal.

Which means that I also took off my shoes and curled my feet underneath me, and told Dusty that we should just quit our jobs and move up to Portland. I exuberantly pitched the idea of packing up our tent and going to the Sasquatch music festival in Seattle over Memorial Day. This pitch was so thorough that my iPhone Safari search history indicates that I googled the full Sasquatch lineup as well as cheap flights for the weekend.

I tried to get him to play the lifesize Jenga set on the asphalt patio, but he continuously refused, opting to retain our cozy chairs by the fireplace. We ate steak frites and fish tacos and talked about children (to have or not - I fall warily on the side of to not) and quizzed each other on Trivial Pursuit questions that were, allegedly, for young adults. Dusty answered the question “Does Chef Boy-ar-di have a mustache?” incorrectly. I couldn’t tell you how many islands comprised Hawaii.

With some vodka in my system I became honestly eloquent, and said that I didn’t know where or how to be creative anymore, how to do what I loved and at the same time keep myself stocked in expensive flats, graphic t-shirts, trips to good restaurants with fancy recipes for brussels sprouts. For the first time I told him that my first passion - and in some ways, my deepest, scariest passion - was to direct. But that I lacked the confidence or the technological willpower to do so.

Sometimes I think that Dusty isn’t listening to me. Like when we were talking about the Boston bombings on the phone as I drove to his house after work on Friday, and suddenly it became very clear that his attention was instead directed towards the conversation he and his brother were having about camping tents. Sometimes, while we’re driving, I’ll say something to him and he won’t respond, but instead observe something out the window - a car driving erratically, a bizarre billboard, bums congregating under an overpass. And I’ll let it go because, let’s face it, I talk a lot, too much sometimes, and he doesn’t need to respond to everything I say.

But then three days later, out of nowhere, he’ll recall that passing statement I’d said to him as we were driving to Target on Saturday. He’ll remember names and places and stories. He’ll remind me I’ve told him five times (sometimes in that same night) about a meeting I had, or the time my sister dumped my bright white Keds in a bucket of muddy water as kids.

At The Phoenix on Saturday night, we talked and we listened to each other. At this point we don’t need the liquid courage, but sometimes it’s nice when happy hour helps take the edge off. And while he might not have met my Jenga challenge, he paid for our drinks, he drove me home, and he won’t forget what I say. Not the idle threats to destroy him in Trivial Pursuit, not the big dreams for an artsy Craftsman in Southeast Portland, not the fervent desire to make something. Not any of it at all.

Long Distance Running

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:00:19 -0700

My freshman year in high school, I took up cross country running. We started training over the summer, taking it slow around the track once, twice, three times. Gradually, my coach pushed us onto the road. Though I was a novice, he was impressed by my early showing of what my father, quoting his old track coach, called “intestinal fortitude.”

Very quickly, I grew very tired of cross country. This was before the age of highly portable iPods, so I was left alone with my thoughts, my breath, the trodding, rhythmic slap of my Adidas on the asphalt. We ran in packs, but soon mine pulled away from me, and as I struggled to inhale fully, I remembered what my mother would tell doctors during check-ups and visits to inspect various bronchial infections: “She’s borderline asthmatic.”

A borderline asthmatic with intestinal fortitude. That sounds about right.

But it wasn’t the borderline asthma that sidelined me, it was blisters. Apparently, I don’t run on the right part of my feet. I’m severely duckfooted, and put way too much weight on the inside of my feet. Which is where I developed huge, weeping blisters, forcing me off the team and into flip flops and gauze bandages for several weeks. And though it was uncomfortable, I prayed that the blisters would last through the duration of cross country season.

They didn’t, and when they were healed, I was expected to rejoin the cross country team. Which I did, because I don’t really like to quit things before their due end, but I never really could get into running a full race after that. I’d start out strong at the starting gun and, as soon as I found a secluded woods, would slow to a brisk walk, quickening into a jog again whenever I found myself being lapped by my opponents and teammates.

I never ran cross country again after that year. It was too hard, to be left alone with my thoughts and my arms and my legs and the sweat on my skin and my heart pumping, pumping, pumping for air that didn’t always come. Instead, I eased into my crouch as a catcher, hiding behind my armor, throwing hard and fast to catch the runner trying to steal second. Balance and propulsion. That’s what I was good at.

Since my experience running cross country, I have recognized runners as a different breed - slightly crazy, like left-handed pitchers. You hear inspirational stories all over the sports world, but you hear more stories about people pushing themselves beyond their limits - to discover new ones - when it comes to the sport of running. You hear about fathers pushing their paraplegic adult sons in strollers across finish lines all over the world, and runners in straw hut villages for whom the sport was a necessity just to retrieve water, supplies. You see daughters running for their mothers, brothers running for their sisters. You see a 26th mile marker dedicated to the 26 we lost at Newtown.

I’ve watched the video clips of the first explosion several times today. I see the explosion, so close to the finish line, and I see one runner literally lose his legs underneath him and crumble to the ground. Others continue running, unaware of the source of the commotion. Others turn, and start running in a different direction. All so close to completion. The finish line is a sacred place.

All acts of violence are senseless. We have seen too many in recent years. I don’t understand any of them, but for some reason the bombing of the Boston Marathon is particularly inexplicable to me. I can’t comprehend why anyone would want to draw negativity towards an event of such pure, unpolitical courage and will. I ask myself how much more we can take from each other, until there is nothing left.

And then there is this quote from Alan Sillitoe’s Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which my mother gave to me and I read while my feet healed enough for me to run again:

“The long-distance run of an early morning makes me think that every run like this is a life - a little life, I know - but a life full of misery and happiness and things happening as you can ever get really around yourself.”

Moanin'

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:55:00 -0700

In high school, there was a brass trio or quartet that would play at the school band concerts. These were unpopular, acne-faced boys who could wail on the sax and the trumpet and other brass instruments that I can’t remember. My father adored them. He could care less about my Pachelbel’s Canon solo on the clarinet, or that my sister was the only kid in the whole school who dared master the humongous bass clarinet (or, as my mother called it with a snicker, “Cassidy’s very large instrument). As soon as these white boys with tremendous soul got up on stage and started playing some jazz, my father would rouse himself with a snort and start bopping his knee and smacking his thigh. God forbid one of them go off on a riff. I swear there’d be tears in his eyes.

One of my favorite songs that the boys played (and they really were quite good) was Charles Mingus’s “Moanin’.” It is a sophisticated song. You could write a great detective story to it, among many other things. It is impossible not to bounce when you listen to it, to shake your head, to slap your thigh like my father did in that stuffy school auditorium so many years ago.

Tonight I’m listening to Moanin’, and I’m tapping away, and I’m thinking about Adam. I think frequently about Adam. I write about Adam more than almost any other friendship or relationship I’ve ever had. Adam was one of my best friends in high school. I haven’t spoken to him in over five years.

The reason I think of Adam when I hear Mingus is because in high school, Adam was a jazz nut who played the drums with more intensity and precocity than almost anyone I’d ever seen. He had natural rhythm. When he rollerbladed, he practically danced.

One night - and I don’t know how this happened because we were all pretty sheltered - our parents let us go into a jazz club in the city. Adam, myself, and several other friends. It was the jazz club that Mingus founded, that his widow, Sue Mingus, still runs. We dressed up. I wore black paints and red pointy shoes with kitten heels.

It was Adam and me and two other guys who knew jazz well, and a girlfriend of mine who was a ballet dancer but didn’t know anything about jazz. I don’t think that the experience of what was happening landed on my girlfriend or me - in fact, I remember drowning myself in my coca-cola, trying to stay awake, as the boys gaped at the Mingus Orchestra, practically orgasming when Sue Mingus herself walked into the dark, red velvet room.

We felt like such adults that night. Sometimes, I forget that it happened. It seems so unbelievable, us sixteen year olds at a jazz club in the city. Even now, it would be a night to write home about, watching the way musicians’ nimble fingers dance over the strings of a stand-up base, the elasticity of a trumpet player’s cheeks…it’s amazing how music can steel you in a moment and also send you off on a fantastic revelry when you hear the same piece so many years later. It is immediate and restorative.

Adam found God when we graduated from college, and I couldn’t handle it. It made me uncomfortable. It made me want to fight with him. I stopped talking to him. To this day, it’s one of my greatest regrets; my greatest failures as a friend.

Half-Assing It

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:00:00 -0700

There are things that I do with great gusto, and to utter completion. Like eating. Reading. Dissecting the movie I’ve just seen. One might even argue that I go beyond completion. That I have, on occasion, the tendency to obsess, to over-analyze. To overeat.

And then there are the things that I commence with the best of intentions. The grandest schemes. I will draw a sketch a day. Write an essay a day. I will take up painting. I will wash and vacuum my car with some regularity. Exercise. Meditate. Keep the US Postal Service running through my copious and frequent handwritten (or typed) correspondence.

These are things that I try to turn into habits, or, if they’re not habits, that I try to at least finish, but rarely do. And if I do, a lot of these projects look better on the front half than they do on the back nine. Like the shoes I tried to dye this weekend.

On an impulse trip to Marshalls, I’d discovered the lace-up oxfords of my dreams on the clearance rack. The only problem was that part of the faux leather was a bright orange, making the shoes look like something that a psychedelic Charlie Brown would wear. Thinking that the orange might not be so bad, I bought them anyway. They were only $20 after all (oh, how far that $20 might get me if I were to be more frugal). But upon showing to them to my sister, I was met with a verbal harangue and an instruction to get thee to a Marshalls return terminal immediately. So, the shoes were thrown back into the trunk of my car (which never guarantees that they’ll actually be returned in a timely fashion - or ever).

While we were running errands this weekend, I popped the back of my car to load some groceries in and the shoes came tumbling out. Sheepishly, I showed them to Dusty, bemoaning the poor color choice of some c-level designer. Dusty shrugged. “Why don’t you just paint them?” he said.

It had never occurred to me that I could fix the shoe situation myself, but after his words of encouragement, I ventured to a Michaels craft store on Good Friday. I tried in vain to find leather paint while talking to my mother about the latest family dramas, and, unable to locate the appropriate materials and unwilling to cut the filial gossip session short, selected a vial of baby-shit brown Martha Stewart craft paint and was on my way.

Several hours later, I set up a craft station in front of some bad reality show about chefs who were not really chefs on E! and started to paint the shoes. I even read the instructions first. I sponged the paint on. I let it dry. I added another layer. I even used a wet paper towel to wipe off the excess paint. Then, even though I should have put on another layer, and even though I should have let them dry longer, I blasted a hair dryer on the wet material for five minutes then wore my new oxfords out of the house because yes, I am that impatient.

I wore them all weekend. I felt fabulous. I didn’t even care that the paint had started to crack in some places, and in some places, I realized, I’d never even applied it. I tried to convince myself that some of the construction-sign orange that peeked through gave the shoes gave them character. At the very least, I was proud of myself for seeing my little craft project through to mediocre completion.

On Sunday, I was sitting with my feet propped up on the couch and Dusty took a look at my shoes. ”See?” I said. “I painted them, like you told me to.”

He took my foot in his hand and examined the shoe. Trying hard to find a nice way to say that I’d done a really shitty job.

“What sort of paint did you use?”

“Some Martha Stewart stuff.”

He put my foot down. “Next week, we’ll spray the whole shoe with vinyl paint. Then you won’t get these cracks. It’ll all be one even color.”

“Will it hold?”

“Yeah. It’s vinyl spray. That’s what it does.”

And next weekend, that’s exactly what he’ll do. What Dusty has done for my cheap but beloved pair of Marshalls clearance Oxfords, he’s also done for the custom set of Cards Against Humanity that we created, our Halloween costumes, affixing my new license plate to my car, re-designing my website, photoshopping my friend’s face onto dollar bills for her birthday party at a bikini bar, and various other brilliant ideas that I’ve had, but haven’t had the focus or ability to do well (or at all).

And I imagine he’ll do the same thing for the “garden” of spinach and carrots and tomatoes and cucumbers that we’ve decided to grow, which I’m currently enamored with in its seedling phase, but will quickly forget to water or trim, until we’re able to sow the fruits of our (his) labors.

Heralding from New Jersey and later choosing to make my home in Los Angeles, I’ve spent a lot...

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 07:40:13 -0700

Heralding from New Jersey and later choosing to make my home in Los Angeles, I’ve spent a lot of time defending the places I live. The “What exit?” scoffs never made much sense to me when I told people I was a Jersey girl, because where I’m from, we don’t use the interstate as much as we use roads that are barely paved and occasionally frequented by horses, crossed by foxes and deer and raccoons. And Los Angeles, contrary to popular (and particularly North-Eastern opinion) is not full of vapid, botoxed robots ignoring traffic laws while talking on their cell phones and nearly decapitating pedestrians with their oversized Hummers and Range Rovers. Well, not completely. At least, not in most provinces other than Beverly Hills.

I don’t understand the particular need of visitors and detractors from afar to make it clear that I’ve chosen a bad place to live. The people who like to post on my facebook wall various lists regarding LA’s poor performance in things pertaining to air quality, or traffic. Not to say that those things are any laughing matter. But let’s face it - the ozone and the absence of its layer isn’t just targeting LA. Nor is gridlock foreign to, let’s say, a New Yorker. Or anyone commuting from the tristate area. I resist the temptation to respond to most of the postings, or these jabs from friends who are still pack east, or up north, or down south. I could retaliate with similar statistics about their respective homes, but why bother? What’s the point?

In my graduating high school class, very few people ventured west of Indiana. In my graduating college class, very few people ventured to Hollywood, opting instead for graduate school, a nomadic existence in Europe, Teach for America, the Peace Corps, or putting down deeper roots in Portland. I respect all of those decisions - I envy them too sometimes. But I’m also proud that I chose to follow my heart to Portland, and then to Los Angeles. I’m grateful that my parents didn’t hold on too tight, that they let me go and paid for the plane tickets. Their blessing to go explore the uncharted West has produced a child who sings on the freeway even when she’s stuck in traffic, who watches the sun set into palm trees every day and yet still feels compelled, every day, to take a snapshot as though she might never see it again.

And when people from my past find their way to Los Angeles - as many, many have over the past almost six years - I welcome them with open arms to my city. I show them what I have learned, what I have come to love about LA. Because I don’t see the point of focusing on anything else.

Being that it’s Los Angeles, we spend a lot of time in the car together. Like learning how to...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 09:28:00 -0700

Being that it’s Los Angeles, we spend a lot of time in the car together. Like learning how to walk side by side, arm in arm, in public, we’ve learned how to sit together, how to wait at traffic lights and navigate surface streets and deal with congestion on the freeway. He rests his hand on my right thigh, mans the music with his free hand, taps rhythms on my leg as I brake and change lanes. Sometimes, when the roads are manageable, I reach over and lace my fingers through his. He watches for cops and slaps my hand when I’m texting at a red light. The glove compartment is broken and every other time he gets in the car he tries to fix it. He silently prays for me to slow down as my speeds climb up the 80’s when the roads are clear and I’m anxious to get somewhere. When I’ve had a glass or two too many at a bar, he gets behind the wheel and drives, adjusting the seat because I’m short and drive practically on top of the steering wheel. Sometimes he forgets to take the parking brake off (because who, other than me, pulls up her parking brake every single time she parks), but luckily my new car beeps to remind you about the brake - and your seatbelt.

One of these days, he’ll finally give in and we’ll drive to Silver Lake and try to fold into the crowd of hipsters. One of these days we’ll take another trip up the coast, to Monterey and to San Francisco and to Portland and maybe even further North, to lands we’ve yet to explore. One of these days we’ll drive back to Palm Springs, where we first said I love you, and drink Moscow Mules out of plastic cups and swim and read and people watch all day. One of these days we’ll drive to Arizona, and I’ll meet his family and convince him to go to a Spring Training baseball game.

People complain about how much time they spend in the car out in LA. They praise New York City for its public transportation. But I have to believe that we wouldn’t talk about things on the subway the way we do within the confines of my car, and that his hand wouldn’t rest on my thigh on a bus the way it does in our car: comfortable and possessive and present and right. He slows me down when I drive too fast; he helps me figure out where to go.

Delayed Gratitude

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:07:47 -0800

Everything about me has been feeling heavy lately, right down to my breasts, which seem to spill painfully out of any bra that I try to strap them into. Everything has felt full, too full, engorged and swollen. Bloated. I have allowed this swell, this weight, to drag me down. I’ve indulged myself in this exhaustion. Snapped at people. Eaten cookies. Blamed my new birth control for extreme mood swings and heightened anxiety.

The truth is that things - all things - are changing in a very big way, and my capacity to deal with such changes is rudimentary and poorly refined. These changes all happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to resist and I barely have time to cope.

I went to a psychic once who told me that addicts and other people who are unhealthy (both mentally and physically) often appear fat or bloated because the toxins that they have swirling through their bodies are trying to bust out, literally pushing against their skin, trying to tear through the surface.

I’m not a drug addict but I’m very good at holding onto other toxic things, like anxiety and fear and anger. I obsess about these things. I talk about them, rehash them, to anyone who will listen. I refuse to let them go, instead holding them closely, believing they are all my fault - even the sources of my anger - and blaming myself for obsessing and for creating them in the first place.

It’s a day that feels like late spring in Southern California. The last day of February. I ate my lunch in ten minutes and headed outside to the concrete benches positioned perfectly to capture the mid afternoon sun. My intention was to read but I found myself sitting quietly as the right song came on at the right time on my ipod. I thought about how tomorrow will be my last day on the Fox Lot. Tomorrow will be my last day as an assistant. Tomorrow I will go to the doctor to receive confirmation that the abnormal test results I received aren’t scary. Tomorrow evening I will fly down the 10 and the 60 to La Quinta for the second weekend in a row, to lie in the sun with good girlfriends who I’ve known since t-ball practice in Peapack Gladstone.

In college, I stage managed a play based on the works of Edward Gorey. It sold out every single night, and was so popular we actually added a performance. There is a line from the show that comes to me every so oftentimes out of nowhere: “Life is distracting and uncertain, she said and went to draw the curtain.”

Life IS distracting and it IS uncertain, but I’m learning to not only deal with that but be grateful for the uncertainties. The opportunities and changes and challenges that present themselves so randomly. I’m learning to be grateful for change because it keeps me on my toes. I’m learning to let go of the fear and the anxiety, and the anger. I’m learning to take advantage of the people who want me to take advantage of them, who beg me to share and lean on them even if that doesn’t always come naturally to me.

But most of all, I’m grateful for this sunshine during lunch, and that weight can be shifted, lifted. And that I’m here.

Keep It In Your Pants, Beyonce

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:00:39 -0800

My senior year in college, I tried for all of five minutes to keep a video diary, two of which were spent trying to frame the shot correctly, one of which was spent actually talking in a meandering and incoherent flow, and two of which were spent reviewing the tape and wondering if I could ever make the dark circles underneath my eyes ever disappear. Ditching the video journal, I returned to my trusted paper and pen, and taking many selfies on my computer, camera, and phone, all of which I would delete immediately.

This weekend, my sister and I returned from a half-assed hike in Malibu and a filling kale salad lunch in Santa Monica to our apartment to watch Beyonce’s documentary, “Life is But a Dream.” I’ll admit that I’ve been a little late to the Beyonce party. I never listened to Destiny’s Child, considered the phrase “bugaboo” was kind of silly, and actually thought that Beyonce had a weak voice. But when she came into her own, I was drawn to some of her songs, especially “Get Me Bodied,” which became a powerwalking staple. I liked the style she’d grown into. I liked the work she did with Michelle Obama. I vehemently disagreed with my boyfriend, who thought “Blue” was a stupid name. I said it was soulful.

From the amount of billboards, bus benches, and viral advertising, you’d think that “Life is But a Dream” was a major studio release, opening in every theatre across the country. Instead, it was an HBO documentary - or rather, a Beyonce production - that premiered on the premium network on February 16th. And it was a trainwreck - written, directed, produced, and starring Beyonce. I don’t understand why people are being so polite about this, subtly suggesting that it was a little self-involved. Homegirl might be suffering from the biggest case of narcissism that I’ve ever seen.

I was skeptical the minute that I realized she’d commissioned this documentary, that she’d directed it, that it was a “Beyonce Knowles film.” At the very beginning she talks about how people loved Nina Simone because of her voice, and not who she was or wasn’t married to - and yet here’s Beyonce, directly contradicting that, telling us, the world, her adoring public, that she’s feeling down, and needs to listen to one of her own songs and then go make love to her husband. Even their home videos made me uncomfortable, performers still performing. In the most intimate settings, on the most exotic of getaways, Beyonce is still reciting poorly scripted soliloquies.

She holds herself up as a feminist (though that word is, by my count, mentioned a total of zero times in the entire film). But if that’s her brand of girl power, I’m not buying it. A woman doesn’t need to express her power by being ubiquitous, or by stomping through a drum-heavy power pop song in a militaristic leotard. To me, feminism means that a woman feels comfortable being WHOEVER she wants to be, without having to construct some complicated persona, or shouting her power from the rooftops (though if that comes organically, mazel tov).

More than anything, I think that being a strong woman - or a strong person - and definitely a strong artist means being able to not only accept collaboration, but accept criticism as well. The stage was not built for just one person, nor is the performance always perfect. But Beyonce only wants us to see the faults that she’s approved, the mistakes that she has gracefully re-formed to fit into the journey that she is branding. This is not something she should be forgiven, nor is it something that should be ignored. In all the reviews that I’ve read of her “documentary,” writers have lightly touched upon her megalomaniacal ego, choosing instead to focus on her undeniable talent as a performer. But this wasn’t a documentary just about Beyonce onstage - this was (allegedly) about Beyonce and her a life as a whole. And it wasn’t. It fed into a growing plague in our society, the notion that we are all interesting enough to cut our home videos and ego-driven monologues into a “documentary.” We’re not.

Maybe we were wrong to expect more than a carefully cultivated image. The life and times of Beyonce is nobody’s business but her own, and she’s allowed to share with us as much or as little as she would like. But next time she comes on the TV, I’m switching to a more engrossing channel. Or turning it off completely.

The Blessing & Curse of St. Valentine

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:00:30 -0800

In spite of staggering evidence to the contrary, I remain ever hopeful that, one of these years, my fantasy of Valentine’s Day will live up to its reality.

Historically, February 14th has not gone well for me. In college, my long term relationship inevitably faltered around mid-February. Not only did he maintain the highly unoriginal stance that Valentine’s Day was a holiday originated by Hallmark, but over the course of three years, he cheated on me once, broke up with me once, and the third time simply ignored the day. I don’t mean to villanize this college ex as much as I mean to say to myself, “What the fuck was I thinking?”

In the school days before that, I have twice received special Valentine’s gifts, both from boys who weren’t terribly popular but who I was very nice to every other day out of the year except February 14th. This day, all I wanted was for my unrequited crushes to leave a plastic necklace, a carnation, anything, in my cubby. Because it wasn’t what I wanted from who I wanted, I behaved poorly, refusing to accept or admire the gifts I did receive. In high school, I tossed and turned the night of February 13th anxiously wondering if any guy would spend the money he would normally use on buying weed from the resident suburban drug dealer in the boys’ second floor bathroom on a heartshaped box of candy instead. Alas, my teenage years were spent receiving very sweet valentines from all my sweet girlfriends and my utterly platonic male friends, none of which I appreciated.

My tenure in LA has yielded six Valentine’s Days that haven’t been much to speak of, including one blind date that was fine but produced no soulmate. The date was arranged through the now defunct website crazyblinddate.com, which given its name, suggests why its patrons were insane enough to schedule a first date on February 14th to begin with.

And yet, my love for the holiday has endured. It’s because of the morning of February 14th, when you wake up and the day is full of possibility. Sure, as time goes on, as you stare at your sad desk salad at lunch, glaring at the empty spot on your desk where a dozen roses should be, your hope dwindles. Your expectations are, most likely, not met. But I don’t care. I have come to terms with my utter romanticism. I like even indulging myself in the fleeting possibility of flowers. A surprise. Dinner. Cards that are handmade, not Hallmark. I like thinking about effort. I like the hope, the fantasy of it all.

I have repented for my earlier Valentine’s sins by sending friends, lovers, and acquaintances valentines for the past couple of years. It’s not even a task that feels hard. I like making cards, buying chocolates, drawing and coloring in hearts til my hands bleed. I like surprising them with the unexpected: a mixtape on the doorstep. A rose on their windshield. To the sweet, sweet boys who, in kindergarten and fourth grade saved up their allowance and left flowers in my Valentine’s mailbox, thank you and I’m sorry and you obviously deserved better than me. To my college boyfriend who showed utter disdain for the holiday and, occasionally, for me - I hope you’ve learned with girlfriends since me that you should embrace any and all opportunities (commercial and otherwise) to show someone you love them. And that I deserved better than you.

To Be Kind

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 08:07:00 -0800

About two years ago, after my pride got in the way of many second or third dates, I decided to let my love flow a little more freely. And what I mean by that is, I stopped worrying about how my expressions of affection, appreciation, or even just remembrance would be received. Or how I would be perceived. Or what I would get in return. I just said what I meant. What I felt.

Up until that point, I was very good at playing games. Withholding affection because I didn’t want to love someone more than they loved me. Refusing to give an inch til I acquired a mile. The problem was, I never got anywhere.

So two years ago, I started writing more letters, and sending more texts, and saying more good things to more people, without expecting anything in return. A couple of months into this new mindset, I started dating someone, and didn’t play any games. I texted him when I wanted to. I saw him when I felt like it. I told him that I thought he was smart, that I liked his eyes, that I liked his smile. I’ve spent every weekend (and many weekdays, and weeks, and vacations) with him since.

Beyond boyfriends, I’ve done this for friends and mentors and people I don’t even know that well. Of course, I’ve also slipped up many times, and been a real castrating bitch. Because not only do I have a tremendous capacity to love, I also have a tremendous capacity to be a huge asshole. Like most people. In the end, though, people have always surprised me with their gratitude. With how much it means to them to get a letter in the mail, or a pat on the back. I guess we spend so much time in our own little caves of self-doubt and judgement and me me me that it’s nice when someone else tries to break in and shine a little - if only temporary - light.

This world can be so hard. Sometimes just waking up in the morning requires superhuman strength. To love honestly makes everything a little easier. People don’t forget random notes and acts of kindness. Believe me.

Bitches at Dogtown

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:41:47 -0800

For the most part, I write best from bed. Usually, in order to grind out some pages, I need to find myself in the correct state of mind: somewhere between dreaming and aggressively overthinking things. Since I moved into my new apartment (over a year and a half ago), I haven’t been able to write anything substantial at my desk. For some reason it doesn’t feel right. So, the left side of my bed it is. I think that my computer has burned a hole into the mattress. At the very least, it’s given my ovaries enough radiation to make child-bearing tricky, when and if that time comes.

But every so often, presented with a free couple of hours on the weekend or, even more rarely, early dismissal from work during the week, I find myself schlepping to a coffee shop to try to get some work done. As with most things in my life, this involves overpacking and finding the perfect outfit to suit the occasion, even if it is nothing more than leggings, flats, and an unwashed sweatshirt. It is very important, too, to have the perfect pen, or markers, or notebook, or stationery set, with me at the coffee shop, because I might not feel like working on the screenplay, instead I might feel like writing letters. Or drawing a comic. Or, I might feel like reading, which is why I also make sure to pack my iPad, the latest New Yorker, a fiction book, and a non-fiction book. My mother gave me a new purse for Christmas - it’s a beautiful, rich, camel-colored leather. As I lifted it out of its packaging, she offered advice that she knew would go unheeded: “Try not to overstuff it and destroy it too quickly.”

My favorite place to stretch out, in my sweatshirt and other carefully selected accoutrements, is what I believe is now called 212 Pier, at Pier & Main in Santa Monica. It’s open 24 hours, reminds me of the musty book loft in the Reed College student union in Portland, and has room for me to unpack. But lately, my sister has been talking up Dogtown Coffee, at Main Street & Pico (also in Santa Monica), so that’s where we ended up this Sunday.

The thing about coffee shops - especially independent coffee shops in LA - is that the clientele is a fairly judgmental, discerning lot. I can see them all rolling their eyes when I order my non-fat hot chocolates (I hate coffee), and I’m sure they all probably think that I talk too loudly. This Sunday, my sister and I unfurled our lot of job manuals, books, iPads, phones, computers, and notebooks on a table next to two girls with similar sabbath plans. You’d think that they’d smile and nod, or not say anything at all. But instead they sneered. Tried to inch their table away from us, but it was bolted down to the floor. And when I accidentally kicked one girl’s Jansport on the way up to the counter to pick up my tea latte (a newfound and miraculous replacement for hot chocolates), she grabbed it, sighed, and shoved it under her chair.

Despite the fact that we were met with such righteous indignation on the part of these girls who were taking copious notes on a book called “Fertile Matters,” I like Dogtown a lot. It’s small, but has a lot of windows and the open, breezy feel of most cafes and restaurants that close to the beach. The patrons range from those girls (who I can only imagine were transplanted east coast womens studies majors - and who also had restless leg syndrome, which is REALLY fucking obnoxious), to men clad in pro-style bike spandex, to the homeless guy looking for spare change. And dogs. Lots, and lots of dogs. An English bulldog distracted me for a solid twenty minutes on Sunday.

The thing about going to a coffee shop with your sister and your girlfriend is that you don’t get much work done. There’s a lot to catch up on. There are each other’s hot beverages to try. There are dogs peeing on fire hydrants that you must make sure your coffee shop compatriots see. There are random thoughts that must be shared, often at a loud decibel because you’ve forgotten to take your headphones off. What I love most about these coffee shops is that anyone can sit down and start talking, for less than what it would cost to go out to lunch or even pay for parking down at the beach. We all tried to get some work done, but the chatter was much more entertaining. Which probably also pissed the girls next to us off, though soon their conversation was as animated as ours. Who knows? Perhaps female camaraderie is contagious.

A-Frame on a Friday Night

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 09:30:26 -0800

I love food. It’s my reward at the end of a good day, my solace at the end of a bad one. There are days when the best therapy for me is sauteing garlic and olive oil in a pan. But most Fridays, after a week of - if I’m good - brown bag lunches and light dinners to compensate for the time of night at which I’m eating them (8 if I’m lucky; 9 more often than not), all I want is something to be prepared for me. Something delicious. Something fulfilling. Something that welcomes the weekend in with open arms and a sweet aftertaste.

Most Fridays afterwork, I head to Dusty’s house. At around 10am, I start counting down the hours til I can take my secret backroads route to his house, avoiding the Jews clogging the crosswalks on Pico Blvd. on their way to synagogue. At around 2pm on Friday, I will start thinking about what I want to eat that night.

Perhaps the greatest source of tension in our relationship (if you ask me - Dusty might have another answer) is food. To me, in terms of life’s great pleasures, it dominates with authority a list containing, among other things, the well-turned phrase, Palm Springs, and sex. To Dusty, it is a necessary evil that he frequently forgets about until long after dinnertime, at which point he’ll scavenge in a fairly bare kitchen for a dry tortilla, and possibly some cheese, if he’s lucky.

But at this point, my dogged and unwavering appetite has worn down his wariness of pumpkin quinoa, ziti baked with tofu instead of ricotta cheese, and salads. Mainly I think he realizes resistance is futile, and that it’s easier to placate me with at least one loving spoonful of whatever I’m trying to shove down his throat.

We rarely make restaurant reservations, which means that more Fridays than not, we’re striking out at every restaurant on Main Street in Culver City. Neither of us like to wait longer than fifteen minutes for a table. The good news is that I’m not a fan of many of the restaurants on the Culver drag. The bad news is that usually around 9pm, I’m reconsidering my relationship status.

Though intensely frustrating, our excursions rarely end in total failure, decapitation, or a screaming match. This past Friday, we finally made it to A-Frame, slightly west of downtown Culver City. It’s the type of restaurant that’s meant for people like us - in other words, they don’t accept reservations, ever. Though the ceiling steeples into - what else - a high A-frame - the place doesn’t hold that many tables, all of which are communal. After a fifteen minute wait, we were approached by the hostess, who explained to us that a couple had decided to sit on the same side as each other - would we mind doing the same? We’re agreeable enough people (and we were also starving), so we complied.

We didn’t realize that the communal table we’d be sitting at was only a four-top, so we proceeded to have a very intimate - and fairly good - evening with two people about fifteen years our seniors, who could only have been dating for about two months. Three max. She talked loudly into his ear, making sure to brush her chest against his. He smiled, his arm on the back of her chair, and ordered more food than they’d ever eat from the waitress. Dusty later told me that the man also occupied almost all the floorspace on his side of the table.

What’s good about a place like A-Frame is that they serve a lot of small plates, so we were able to try a lot of different things - which satisfied me - without overwhelming Dusty’s stomach, which is the size of a chihuahua’s. While the other couple at our table devoured fried zucchini sticks and chicken, we stuck to some kitchen fries, a roasted vegetable salad, and the spare ribs. The fries - which I’d expected to be like chips - were large, disappointing hunks of potato, only four to a plate and so hot the roof of my mouth is still tender (though my overeagerness is probably more to blame for that). The ribs were good, messy, which is why Dusty ended up holding each piece while we both took bites from it. If the couple across from us is wondering, it wasn’t a romantic gesture on his part - it was a pragmatic one. I was wearing a white silk shirt that had, miraculously, gotten through the day unstained, and we were trying to keep it that way. We are not a terribly romantic couple, but we are a loving and practical one.

I would say that the biggest success of the evening was the roasted vegetable salad, even if it was a little heavy on the dressing and the celery puree that hid below well roasted - and obscure - root vegetables, cucumbers, and some of the best brussel sprouts I’ve had in a long time. Dusty not only had one bite - he had two. It would have been three if he hadn’t consumed a mushroom and decided to stick to the ribs.

For dessert, we had churros - pound cake churros, no less - and they were good, though I don’t think anything will compare to the churros we had several weeks ago at Picca restaurant on Pico Blvd., another Friday find after an hour of hungry arguing. Somewhere down the road, I know that Dusty will thank me for expanding his palate. And one of these days, I’m going to surprise him and pick up some In-n-Out on my way over to his house on Friday night.

Welcome Back

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 20:25:00 -0800

This blog was pretty quiet for a while, as I spent time living the actual thing that I’d written and wondered about for most of my adult blogging days: falling in love. What no one tells you about falling in love is that it’s actually a little scary, exhausting, and requires patience, follow-through, and occasionally some stubbornness. Not unlike learning how to ride a bicycle or training for a marathon.

I named this blog, so long ago, after my favorite short story, “For Esme, With Love and Squalor” by J.D. Salinger. I thought that “love and squalor” was an accurate description for my life in Los Angeles. Until you sell a screenplay or direct a hit movie (or, even after that, until you develop your own reality show or something), there’s a lot of squalor to be lived. You bring your own lunch so that you can afford to go out to dinner on the weekend. You shop clearance racks whenever possible. You ride your bike and walk most places on the weekend in order to save your gas tank for the necessary treks to and from work during the week.

Obviously, there’s also a lot of love here in LA, though most of which I’ve talked about and experienced since my move out here was of the platonic variation. Even the dates that I went on, the hookups that I had, were a far cry from love, though I didn’t always know that at the time. Instead, I found myself surrounded by some incredible people who knew what to say when I was in the throes of yet another quarter life crisis, and a sister who was willing to re-wash the dishes after I’d alleged to having done them, because she loves me that much and also could see the many flecks of cereal dried onto the bowls that I chose to ignore.

Then I re-met someone who’d been a fling several years before. Suddenly, the “love” part of love and squalor took on an additional meaning. Learning how to navigate between him, me, and the rest of LA (including not only the city streets but also the people living on them - my friends) hasn’t always been without its roadblocks. But it’s been worth it. Now, almost a year and a half later, I feel like I’m figuring it out a little bit, and learning how to incorporate the things that I loved alone into the relationship I have with the person I love. Which, in this blog’s happy case, means that yesterday we sat for a good four hours while I scribbled designs and he did the hard CSS, HTML, coding work.

I think that for a long time, due only to my own self-consciousness, I hesitated to introduce him to any aspect of myself that I thought might bore or disinterest him. I didn’t ask for help on complicated things because I thought that he wouldn’t want to help; that’s the way that my past relationships had always gone. But I realized that I was with someone different when he willingly accompanied me in and out of almost every store at the outlet mall just east of Los Angeles several weekends ago. And so I sat down with him and shared my blog, which is actually a very important part of me, even if I’ve ignored it for a while. I’m glad I asked him for help, and even more grateful that he was willing and able to make this look better than I ever thought it could.

The “love” part of this blog is not going to suddenly be about how things are perfect - even within the love, there’s still squalor and dolor, misunderstandings and frustrations. And there’s also still all the love that I had before, which I take a certain solace in knowing will never leave me, no matter how obnoxious I am. I have no idea what love will mean to me next year, next week, or even tomorrow, but today, it’s a wonderful thing and it makes Los Angeles look even better.

I finished the first draft of my screenplay exactly one month ago today. I also joined a gym today....

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:48:10 -0800

I finished the first draft of my screenplay exactly one month ago today. I also joined a gym today. Obama was inaugurated today. Today, it was 75 degrees in Los Angeles.

Tomorrow, it’s time to begin.

One week from my birthday, it’s been a long quiet time but, impossibly/possibly, I am almost...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:38:46 -0800

One week from my birthday, it’s been a long quiet time but, impossibly/possibly, I am almost there. I have a beginning. I just wrote an ending. It’s the foggy middle - the actual living, instead of the set-up or the closure, that’s giving me the trouble. As if that weren’t always the case.

The nights are getting so cold that I blowdry my hair just to feel the hot air on my scalp. And by...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 22:16:44 -0800

The nights are getting so cold that I blowdry my hair just to feel the hot air on my scalp. And by cold I mean, this is the warmest temperature that my parents endured for a week when they had no power, after Sandy trampled New Jersey.

I got a man elected president and crashed my car all in one week. I’m now driving a cheap sports car and my mother has taken to calling me Sporty Spice. We’re all grateful no one was hurt, and I’m bitter that Toyota Yarises have quite significant blind spots. I’m also grateful that we elected a man who cries when he is thankful, and knows how to do the handwave from Beyonce’s Single Ladies music video.

God is in the details but also coincidence, serendipity. It’s an omen when I discover the perfect pair of black motorcycle boots online, and they are 27 cents less than what’s left on a gift card to a luxury department store. I’ll make up the difference in coins that I find on streets. Stepped out of my rental car this morning and discovered fifteen cents - a nickel and a dime. My mother would say that this is the universe telling me that I’m where I’m supposed to be - this is the universe rewarding me.

This is the time of the year that I do everything I can to resist breaking down and falling into the familiar, comfortable hole of self pity and low self esteem, as I rack up another year with (what seems to be) very little to show for myself. The truth is that I’ve spent twelve months getting procrastinating but nevertheless getting older - it doesn’t just happen in November and December, even though it feels like it.

Last night I left a candle burning all night, at the desk that doesn’t feeling right for writing, but it will do. When I woke up in the morning, to the 7am grayness, the flickers of flame against my wall made it feel as though there was a fireplace in my room. I closed my eyes and slept til 8.

Second acts are hard and my headphones keep falling apart.

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 20:40:57 -0800

Second acts are hard and my headphones keep falling apart.