Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with take warning,
I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion?
-Walt Whitman
To begin with take warning,
I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion?
-Walt Whitman
Meltdown
I just checked my calendar for October and every weekend, every evening except one is booked solid. How did this happen? MAK Center tour, Dine LA, screenings, think tank meetings, out-of-town friends, bachelorette party, two weddings, three birthday parties, girl-dates, yoga intensive, writing seminar. In November I will go home and sleep. Right now, I just feel a little like crying. I don't doubt all of these things will be fun. I just don't know how I will juggle my sanity in the midst of it all.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
An email from my mom
My mom's interpretation of one of my last blog posts, reprinted without her permission:
I love everything you write that reveals your interior life. You must explore being forgotten more. Being remembered as what, for what, who particularly you want to be remembered by or not forgotten by - these are very very important questions.
I was thinking in terms of asking yourself - the proprioceptive question - 'what do I mean by being forgotten?' or not being remembered. It is much much more than just the ego self, or for that matter leaving a legacy.
But you must explore it more.
I love everything you write that reveals your interior life. You must explore being forgotten more. Being remembered as what, for what, who particularly you want to be remembered by or not forgotten by - these are very very important questions.
I was thinking in terms of asking yourself - the proprioceptive question - 'what do I mean by being forgotten?' or not being remembered. It is much much more than just the ego self, or for that matter leaving a legacy.
To me it feels like a yearning to be seen as what your real self is inside; connecting with others from within. It may even sound strange but it's like the real true you within you doesn't want to be forgotten by the external persona. Or maybe thats just my weird interpretation
But you must explore it more.
I don't know how this came up the other day, but it did. So I found myself looking up the trailer for it. When I was 8 years old, this was my favorite movie. I saw it like six times. I even wrote a movie report about it for school. And I cried at the end. every. single. time. I loved this movie even more than Adventures in Babysitting.
They don't make movies like this anymore. Everyone in Project X deserves an Academy Award. Especially the chimps. The real tragedy is not that the military was conducting cruel, secret experiments on chimps, but that in real life, instead of being given Academy Awards, these sad primates were probably sent back to the Griffith Park Zoo and harassed by second graders who couldn't appreciate their talent.
They don't make movies like this anymore. Everyone in Project X deserves an Academy Award. Especially the chimps. The real tragedy is not that the military was conducting cruel, secret experiments on chimps, but that in real life, instead of being given Academy Awards, these sad primates were probably sent back to the Griffith Park Zoo and harassed by second graders who couldn't appreciate their talent.
Pierre Koenig's Case Study House No. 21I went to this house. And I met the owner. And I lounged in front of the fireplace, and pretended for a minute that I lived here. I am such an architecture stalker. Koenig is my favorite architect. For a while it was Wallace Neff, and I love Neutra and Lautner. When I am sad, I drive to Neutre Place off the Silverlake Reservoir and walk around. I also have a tendency to befriend architects because they're always such delightful and thoughtful people. But Pierre Koenig understands homes in a way that no one else does; he has a transcendent vision of spaces, and he works with the landscape. In other words, he excavates. He doesn't add to the landscape, like Frank Lloyd Wright. He doesn't embellish or try to create something that dominates the natural space around it. His vision is simple and ingenious.
Monday, September 28, 2009
N and I, cross-legged next to each other on the carpet in the hallway. "What's your biggest fear?" she asks. She is serious.
"Being forgotten," I say. I could tell her where this comes from, that I spent my life moving, changing schools, losing touch with friends, that in my teenage years and in my 20s I was only interested in the men who weren't interested back and that they always moved on, far more easily than I did. I could tell her that I have a near-photographic memory for experiences and remember everything and am hurt sometimes when others don't. I could tell her that I have worked at this, meditated on this. I know this is my ego, screaming out to be noticed. "Notice me, don't forget me." I could tell her that I know this is a natural process of life. People supposedly move on. Although I cringe just writing that statement. I could tell her that I am better now. I am okay with the idea of being forgotten for the most part. Most days of the year, I can handle it. And that I know that the people who love me won't forget me. And this is all that matters. I am afraid of people disappearing into the world, but maybe I am even more afraid of disappearing myself.
"Would you forget me?" I always ask the people I love. And it's a petty question. But my need to know the answer to this outweighs my embarrassment at asking it. I am not needy, I do not need anything from you. I can manage just fine. I am empathetic and I like to give, to care for those I love. But yes, there is a string attached. There is one thing I require of you: please don't forget me.
"Being forgotten," I say. I could tell her where this comes from, that I spent my life moving, changing schools, losing touch with friends, that in my teenage years and in my 20s I was only interested in the men who weren't interested back and that they always moved on, far more easily than I did. I could tell her that I have a near-photographic memory for experiences and remember everything and am hurt sometimes when others don't. I could tell her that I have worked at this, meditated on this. I know this is my ego, screaming out to be noticed. "Notice me, don't forget me." I could tell her that I know this is a natural process of life. People supposedly move on. Although I cringe just writing that statement. I could tell her that I am better now. I am okay with the idea of being forgotten for the most part. Most days of the year, I can handle it. And that I know that the people who love me won't forget me. And this is all that matters. I am afraid of people disappearing into the world, but maybe I am even more afraid of disappearing myself.
"Would you forget me?" I always ask the people I love. And it's a petty question. But my need to know the answer to this outweighs my embarrassment at asking it. I am not needy, I do not need anything from you. I can manage just fine. I am empathetic and I like to give, to care for those I love. But yes, there is a string attached. There is one thing I require of you: please don't forget me.
I.
It is not hard to be connected or plugged in to some sort of source, if you are willing to make a compromise. According to the blues legend, Robert Johnson took his guitar to the Dockery Plantation to have it tuned by the devil and later found that he could channel the truth, could approximate it in music, but that he no longer had access to his soul. Musicians are obsessed with this legend, but what does it mean? Artists often tell this story; that in exchange for creative mastery, they accept a life of inner torment. That the excavation of truth is painful. And art is the excavation of truth. You can hear truth in a song. Obviously Johnson didn't literally trade his soul for his transcendent musical ability, but perhaps he renounced the cries of his personal will, or ego, in order to access some part of him that could be labeled as transcendent. Perhaps the very structures of our lives have to crumble, and be dismantled, in order for us to access this kind of transcendence.
II.
I'm not the biggest Joan Baez fan, but I get it if you are. But I remember this thing that I heard her say once, "The easiest kind of relationship for me is with 10000 people. The hardest is with one." It is easier to live in a world of your own projections than to be truly seen in the light; to truly see someone in the light. And artists are sensitive folk; we slip in and out of our own identities. We seek to please. We seek to connect, to be understood, but we also want to be left alone. We often reside comfortably in a world of our creation; a world of gauzy mood lighting. We don't like it when someone turns the fluorescent light bulbs on. Our relationship with truth is elusive at best; we seek it in our work. We struggle with it in life.
III.
The more I write, the more I realize that it's a process of excavation more than an act of creation. I'm not making something new, I'm just trying to unearth something in one piece. And this is a slow, painstaking process. It requires care and love and commitment. So I guess it's not that different from marriage. Married people are always talking about how marriage is challenging and rewarding, and sometimes they look weary, and sometimes they look doubtful and sometimes they look like they know they made the right decision by marrying the person they did.
IV.
Alain de Botton says that writers become our prophets; That we mistake them for oracles. That we let them do our own work. I do this sometimes. I substitute a writer's truth for my own, because I'm not entirely certain of the path that I'm on. Because I want an easy answer. Because I want my reality to correspond with someone else's. Because I am scared. But mostly because I want logical answers and logical solutions to life. The kind that don't really exist. But it's like the legend of the Princess and the Pea. The pea is my own unconscious, my own truth and I can feel it, like a fucking tennis ball, pressed up against the small of my back. No one is my oracle. I am alone. But maybe this is okay.
V.
Male artists often compare an act of creation to taking a shit. Women compare it to childbirth. On a primal level, we know something about the map of our bodies; about the truths they carry. In anthropology classes we were told over and over again, "women are carriers of culture; they carry culture in their bodies." I would roll my eyes at this, but there is something safe about the idea of carrying your history, personal and collective in your bones, in your hips, in your sides. When I find myself being more open to things I have no real control over, I find that my body is more flexible as well. The days when I am accepting of my reality are the days that my whole body is more limber; that yoga poses come easily, that my twists and folds feel like a natural part of me and not something I am struggling against.
VI.
I have had so many of those moments lately: lying on a shag rug and listening to the Velvet Underground. Sitting with N on the carpeted hallway of our office and confiding in one another like family. Telling a story about vomiting on a plane that made someone cry. Not the vomiting part, but the rest of the story, which was amazing and not to be posted over the internets. At least not at this time. Stories, stories, stories, I live by them. I have friend-stalked people for their stories, fallen in love with men for the stories they tell me, savored, saved, remembered, written, noted, held, breathed stories my whole life. If you choose not to see the physical parts of who we are - our legs and arms and mouths and noses and blood and guts and bones, really, we are all a conglomeration of stories and maybe this is the best part of us, because our stories are who we really are in this world.
It is not hard to be connected or plugged in to some sort of source, if you are willing to make a compromise. According to the blues legend, Robert Johnson took his guitar to the Dockery Plantation to have it tuned by the devil and later found that he could channel the truth, could approximate it in music, but that he no longer had access to his soul. Musicians are obsessed with this legend, but what does it mean? Artists often tell this story; that in exchange for creative mastery, they accept a life of inner torment. That the excavation of truth is painful. And art is the excavation of truth. You can hear truth in a song. Obviously Johnson didn't literally trade his soul for his transcendent musical ability, but perhaps he renounced the cries of his personal will, or ego, in order to access some part of him that could be labeled as transcendent. Perhaps the very structures of our lives have to crumble, and be dismantled, in order for us to access this kind of transcendence.
II.
I'm not the biggest Joan Baez fan, but I get it if you are. But I remember this thing that I heard her say once, "The easiest kind of relationship for me is with 10000 people. The hardest is with one." It is easier to live in a world of your own projections than to be truly seen in the light; to truly see someone in the light. And artists are sensitive folk; we slip in and out of our own identities. We seek to please. We seek to connect, to be understood, but we also want to be left alone. We often reside comfortably in a world of our creation; a world of gauzy mood lighting. We don't like it when someone turns the fluorescent light bulbs on. Our relationship with truth is elusive at best; we seek it in our work. We struggle with it in life.
III.
The more I write, the more I realize that it's a process of excavation more than an act of creation. I'm not making something new, I'm just trying to unearth something in one piece. And this is a slow, painstaking process. It requires care and love and commitment. So I guess it's not that different from marriage. Married people are always talking about how marriage is challenging and rewarding, and sometimes they look weary, and sometimes they look doubtful and sometimes they look like they know they made the right decision by marrying the person they did.
IV.
Alain de Botton says that writers become our prophets; That we mistake them for oracles. That we let them do our own work. I do this sometimes. I substitute a writer's truth for my own, because I'm not entirely certain of the path that I'm on. Because I want an easy answer. Because I want my reality to correspond with someone else's. Because I am scared. But mostly because I want logical answers and logical solutions to life. The kind that don't really exist. But it's like the legend of the Princess and the Pea. The pea is my own unconscious, my own truth and I can feel it, like a fucking tennis ball, pressed up against the small of my back. No one is my oracle. I am alone. But maybe this is okay.
V.
Male artists often compare an act of creation to taking a shit. Women compare it to childbirth. On a primal level, we know something about the map of our bodies; about the truths they carry. In anthropology classes we were told over and over again, "women are carriers of culture; they carry culture in their bodies." I would roll my eyes at this, but there is something safe about the idea of carrying your history, personal and collective in your bones, in your hips, in your sides. When I find myself being more open to things I have no real control over, I find that my body is more flexible as well. The days when I am accepting of my reality are the days that my whole body is more limber; that yoga poses come easily, that my twists and folds feel like a natural part of me and not something I am struggling against.
VI.
I have had so many of those moments lately: lying on a shag rug and listening to the Velvet Underground. Sitting with N on the carpeted hallway of our office and confiding in one another like family. Telling a story about vomiting on a plane that made someone cry. Not the vomiting part, but the rest of the story, which was amazing and not to be posted over the internets. At least not at this time. Stories, stories, stories, I live by them. I have friend-stalked people for their stories, fallen in love with men for the stories they tell me, savored, saved, remembered, written, noted, held, breathed stories my whole life. If you choose not to see the physical parts of who we are - our legs and arms and mouths and noses and blood and guts and bones, really, we are all a conglomeration of stories and maybe this is the best part of us, because our stories are who we really are in this world.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic...It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy."
-Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams
-Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams
The Lost Years
The lost years are the detour within a trajectory; maybe the route that you take in order to recover from injury. These are the years that you can't seem to account for; the years, or months that don't make sense. It's not that they're a blur, it's not that you don't remember them. You remember them perfectly, but you find yourself reflecting on them and thinking, "What exactly was I doing in that city/at that job/with that person?" It's a period where you were maybe deeply disconnected from the most authentic parts of yourself.
My lost years were the two years after college. I was recovering from heartbreak; or I should say, I had already gone through Elisabeth Kubler Ross' five stages of grief, and I wasn't sure yet what followed. Because really, what do you do with acceptance, that poor man's consolation prize that comes in the mail a year too late? Some sort of certificate that you've made it through the tough part of having your leg amputated, now you just have to manage the rest of your life without said leg.
And acceptance is like a playground with no swings or jungle gyms. It's a vast park where you have to make up your own games and supposedly have your own fun. So I threw up my arms and said, "what the hell?" I hosted parties. Big parties, small parties, cocktail parties, dinner parties. I took belly dancing lessons. I became really serious about meditation. I stopped drinking caffeine and alcohol. I became a vegetarian. I dropped ten pounds. My weight was in the double digits. I was asked out on dates that I didn't go on. I said I was seeing someone even though I wasn't. I said I was coming down with the flu even though I wasn't. I didn't want to meet anyone new. I had met the right person and I had too much pride to admit just how right it had been because I felt foolish. And so it all fell apart, right in front of my eyes. Like watching something you've built with your blood and your guts get thrown into a shredder. So what was the point of going and getting sushi with some person who I didn't really know, who I didn't feel any sort of connection with, and talking to them about the news and my job and my childhood and what foods we liked when I already knew that this exercise would just leave me feeling more alone in the world?
It wasn't that I harbored a fear of having that particular experience again. Truthfully, I would have welcomed the intensity of it, because the rest of life just felt so mundane, so inconsequential compared to that tortured period. It was peaceful, but like waiting in a hospital waiting room peaceful, after the surgery, I mean. The surgery's over and she's fine, she's in the clear. So now it's about waiting.
Sometimes on friday nights, I would walk across the street to the museum and wander by myself through the glass rooms. I was alone, in an unfamiliar city. But I wasn't scared or even sad, really. There was a vacuum in my life and it hadn't yet been filled, by myself or by someone else. And there was nothing to fix, really, and even the shock of that had passed. I wouldn't pick up the phone and laugh with him again. I had started to forget what his voice sounded like. He probably didn't even know I was here. He probably didn't even think about me. And that was that. And I tried not to think about it too much. One some days, I couldn't even access those feelings anymore; either the love or the grieving - the euphoria or the torture. And I wasn't even really sure how to feel about this.And I was surprised because a couple of days would go by and I wouldn't think about it and then, on the subway one morning, I would smell his cologne, and turn, expecting to see him there, for a moment. But then I remembered that this was my life and that my life came with a script that didn't involve grand gestures.
But what of now? What was there to do with now, aside from host cocktail parties and go to yoga classes and ride the subway to work and learn to cook Thai food? This was fine, but this couldn't really be life, could it? There was nothing grand about it; my life was a tiny island with a small emotional range. One end of the island, I felt happy enough, and on another, I felt mild discomfort and displacement, but there wasn't room for much else anymore. If I wanted more, I would have to take a leap off the island, and swim my way back to shore. But I wasn't quite sure how to do that. I wasn't quite sure if I would ever get quite there, where I needed to be, wherever that was. I was 23. And I didn't really know anything much about anything really. Just that this couldn't be it.
My lost years were the two years after college. I was recovering from heartbreak; or I should say, I had already gone through Elisabeth Kubler Ross' five stages of grief, and I wasn't sure yet what followed. Because really, what do you do with acceptance, that poor man's consolation prize that comes in the mail a year too late? Some sort of certificate that you've made it through the tough part of having your leg amputated, now you just have to manage the rest of your life without said leg.
And acceptance is like a playground with no swings or jungle gyms. It's a vast park where you have to make up your own games and supposedly have your own fun. So I threw up my arms and said, "what the hell?" I hosted parties. Big parties, small parties, cocktail parties, dinner parties. I took belly dancing lessons. I became really serious about meditation. I stopped drinking caffeine and alcohol. I became a vegetarian. I dropped ten pounds. My weight was in the double digits. I was asked out on dates that I didn't go on. I said I was seeing someone even though I wasn't. I said I was coming down with the flu even though I wasn't. I didn't want to meet anyone new. I had met the right person and I had too much pride to admit just how right it had been because I felt foolish. And so it all fell apart, right in front of my eyes. Like watching something you've built with your blood and your guts get thrown into a shredder. So what was the point of going and getting sushi with some person who I didn't really know, who I didn't feel any sort of connection with, and talking to them about the news and my job and my childhood and what foods we liked when I already knew that this exercise would just leave me feeling more alone in the world?
It wasn't that I harbored a fear of having that particular experience again. Truthfully, I would have welcomed the intensity of it, because the rest of life just felt so mundane, so inconsequential compared to that tortured period. It was peaceful, but like waiting in a hospital waiting room peaceful, after the surgery, I mean. The surgery's over and she's fine, she's in the clear. So now it's about waiting.
Sometimes on friday nights, I would walk across the street to the museum and wander by myself through the glass rooms. I was alone, in an unfamiliar city. But I wasn't scared or even sad, really. There was a vacuum in my life and it hadn't yet been filled, by myself or by someone else. And there was nothing to fix, really, and even the shock of that had passed. I wouldn't pick up the phone and laugh with him again. I had started to forget what his voice sounded like. He probably didn't even know I was here. He probably didn't even think about me. And that was that. And I tried not to think about it too much. One some days, I couldn't even access those feelings anymore; either the love or the grieving - the euphoria or the torture. And I wasn't even really sure how to feel about this.And I was surprised because a couple of days would go by and I wouldn't think about it and then, on the subway one morning, I would smell his cologne, and turn, expecting to see him there, for a moment. But then I remembered that this was my life and that my life came with a script that didn't involve grand gestures.
But what of now? What was there to do with now, aside from host cocktail parties and go to yoga classes and ride the subway to work and learn to cook Thai food? This was fine, but this couldn't really be life, could it? There was nothing grand about it; my life was a tiny island with a small emotional range. One end of the island, I felt happy enough, and on another, I felt mild discomfort and displacement, but there wasn't room for much else anymore. If I wanted more, I would have to take a leap off the island, and swim my way back to shore. But I wasn't quite sure how to do that. I wasn't quite sure if I would ever get quite there, where I needed to be, wherever that was. I was 23. And I didn't really know anything much about anything really. Just that this couldn't be it.
When Ted Kennedy cheated on an exam at Harvard, and subsequently was asked to take an academic leave, Joe Kennedy apparently told him something to the effect of, "Teddy, there are people who can get away with things and there are people who can't. You belong to the latter category." There's an important corollary to this, though: even if you happen to be of the former category, there are limits to what you can and can't get away with. So knowing what you absolutely can't get away with is critical (for me: not doing yoga four times a week, small white lies, skinny jeans, patent leather, animal prints, pretending I know how my car works, being a total asshole and thinking no one will notice, too many macarons, more than 2 glasses of wine, etc, etc.). I should avoid these things like the plague. But sometimes I don't, especially the macarons part. Because I like toeing the line. It's one of my favorite activities, right up there with eavesdropping on other people's conversations and wild speculation. But I digress. In an ideal world, everyone would know exactly what they can't get away with and keep these things on a laminated card, like an insurance card, in their wallet, to refer to in the midst of an existential emergency. But we don't live in an ideal world.
We live in a world where Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn think they can make music. And then give interviews and compare their work to the music of Serge Gainsbourg (sleaze) and Brigitte Bardot (racist). Although, I must admit, Gainsbourg and Bardot, despite their respective sleazy and racist tendencies, could at least make decent music together. Really, world. Are you really going to let ScarJo get away with everything just because of her enormous boobs?
We live in a world where Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn think they can make music. And then give interviews and compare their work to the music of Serge Gainsbourg (sleaze) and Brigitte Bardot (racist). Although, I must admit, Gainsbourg and Bardot, despite their respective sleazy and racist tendencies, could at least make decent music together. Really, world. Are you really going to let ScarJo get away with everything just because of her enormous boobs?
10-story Absolut Vagina, Wilshire and Western, Los Angeles
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Fashion being the theme today, I have to say one more thing. The costumes on this show make me fucking crazy. Like, "I want it I want it I want it" crazy. I want to own every dress that Betty Draper dons. Generally, I hate shopping. I shop like a boy. I walk in, I see what I like, I buy it. Or I don't. The only places where I can flit around and try stuff on for hours are vintage fashion stores (I love you, Shareen!). This is a problem. I now have two closets full of vintage 50s/60s/70s dresses. And yet, every time I watch this show, I am insatiably greedy for more. But they're not just clothes, people! These dresses are art.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream. -Federico Fellini
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
People are all up in arms about school budget cuts and the cancellation of gym classes of all things. Seriously, cancel that shit. Almost every bad thing that's happened to me in life happened in a gym class. Also, almost every inane activity I've ever been forced into has been in a gym class. In the second grade, we were kept busy with the asinine exercise of building towers with foam blocks and jumping over them, repeatedly. Being the shortest child in the class and harboring the early stages of a Napoleonic complex, I built the tallest tower, attempted to jump over it and sprained my ankle. I swear, I still have ankle issues in damp weather. I have been attacked by swarms of bugs on ropes courses, attacked by boys who supposedly had crushes on me on jungle gyms, I have skinned and calloused my hands on those stupid ropes we had to climb up year after year, I have puked after being forced to run the mile, and for what? For nothing, I tell you.
And square dancing? Seriously. Indians shouldn't have to square dance for anyone. It's humiliating. Like watching innocent people break rocks at a forced labor camp for your own entertainment. It's like when Asian people have Southern accents. Like Bobby Jindal. I am mesmerized when I watch him speak. Everything that comes out of his mouth is positively boring, but it's like watching a dubbed movie, the voice doesn't correspond with the face. What offended me most about that 60 Minutes interview that was aired months ago (aside from his policies and obvious lack of charisma) was the way he and his wife behaved when they were asked about their ethnicity (on a side note, it was kind of amazing that Jindal has managed to procure himself a soulmate who is also, like him, Indian, but afflicted with a heavy Southern accent, and is also a Republican, also in denial of her Indian roots and also painfully boring. There can't be too many people out there with this particular set of characteristics, so you know Jindal's hit the jackpot with this woman). You could tell that the Jindals had painstakingly prepared for this moment, and they were armed and ready to deny their roots.
"No, no, we don't do Indian activities or cook Indian food in our house," said his wife, shaking her head and widening her eyes, as though being Indian was like the worst kind of rare and untreatable STD. The kind you get from really dirty hookers. The kind that nice middle-class people who live in gated communities shouldn't even know about.
"No, we consider ourselves American," he nodded in agreement, with a kind of don't-push-me-further-on-this-one-Steve-Kroft-sternness. Like the two were mutually exclusive entities. It was absurd. Like "You may see a brown person here, but it's just a costume. Underneath, I'm as white as Dick Cheney." Seriously, what the fuck is up with that?
Uck. He also talked about delivering his own child in a bathtub. Serious Uck.
I think my biggest fear is somehow raising a child who grows up to be like Bobby Jindal. Sometimes you really don't know what you're going to end up with. If I raised a Bobby Jindal, like by accident, or I should say, if Bobby Jindal were my child, I would give tons of funding to his opponent and publicly denounce his views. I might even run against him and apologize for my role in creating him during debates, just to throw him off, and I would do it in a heavy Indian accent. And wear a kurta and bring along big posters of Gandhi to place behind me everywhere I campaigned. I feel so bad for Bobby Jindal's parents. They must weep themselves to sleep every night.
So there it is. My opinion of gym class and Bobby Jindal. That's it.
And square dancing? Seriously. Indians shouldn't have to square dance for anyone. It's humiliating. Like watching innocent people break rocks at a forced labor camp for your own entertainment. It's like when Asian people have Southern accents. Like Bobby Jindal. I am mesmerized when I watch him speak. Everything that comes out of his mouth is positively boring, but it's like watching a dubbed movie, the voice doesn't correspond with the face. What offended me most about that 60 Minutes interview that was aired months ago (aside from his policies and obvious lack of charisma) was the way he and his wife behaved when they were asked about their ethnicity (on a side note, it was kind of amazing that Jindal has managed to procure himself a soulmate who is also, like him, Indian, but afflicted with a heavy Southern accent, and is also a Republican, also in denial of her Indian roots and also painfully boring. There can't be too many people out there with this particular set of characteristics, so you know Jindal's hit the jackpot with this woman). You could tell that the Jindals had painstakingly prepared for this moment, and they were armed and ready to deny their roots.
"No, no, we don't do Indian activities or cook Indian food in our house," said his wife, shaking her head and widening her eyes, as though being Indian was like the worst kind of rare and untreatable STD. The kind you get from really dirty hookers. The kind that nice middle-class people who live in gated communities shouldn't even know about.
"No, we consider ourselves American," he nodded in agreement, with a kind of don't-push-me-further-on-this-one-Steve-Kroft-sternness. Like the two were mutually exclusive entities. It was absurd. Like "You may see a brown person here, but it's just a costume. Underneath, I'm as white as Dick Cheney." Seriously, what the fuck is up with that?
Uck. He also talked about delivering his own child in a bathtub. Serious Uck.
I think my biggest fear is somehow raising a child who grows up to be like Bobby Jindal. Sometimes you really don't know what you're going to end up with. If I raised a Bobby Jindal, like by accident, or I should say, if Bobby Jindal were my child, I would give tons of funding to his opponent and publicly denounce his views. I might even run against him and apologize for my role in creating him during debates, just to throw him off, and I would do it in a heavy Indian accent. And wear a kurta and bring along big posters of Gandhi to place behind me everywhere I campaigned. I feel so bad for Bobby Jindal's parents. They must weep themselves to sleep every night.
So there it is. My opinion of gym class and Bobby Jindal. That's it.
There is attractive and there is unreasonably attractive. This man falls into the latter category. I think if I were to actually see him on the street, I would swoon. Speaking of, the word swoon reminds me of Dead Poets Society. I can't think of words without making personal/historical associations. Does this make me word-autistic? Is there such a thing as word-autism? Do other people have such Rain Man afflictions involving words? I don't know. But there is little use in my personal affliction. I cannot win you money at the casinos, Tom Cruise.
John Hamm apparently lives in my neighborhood. But I never see him. Instead I see useless celebrities like Natalie Portman. I have asked this before and I will ask it again: why is every man in the world in love with her? I don't get it. I can't tell her apart from Keira Knightly and she's just sort of elfin and annoying. And generally, I like elfin people. I've always believed that all elfin people have secret magical powers and I keep waiting for them to let loose and spill the beans about it, to no avail.
I'm in love with Evan Kleinman and her beet gnocchi.
Yesterday at the KCRW fundraiser dinner a woman turned to me and said bitterly, "I'm so annoyed about dating guys who don't eat this or don't eat that. Evan needs to put together a dating site for Good Food listeners or like KCRW listeners. I don't want to end up with someone who doesn't eat mushrooms and beets and cheese and listens to like Mariah Carey."
"You dated someone who listens to Mariah Carey?" I asked incredulously.
"No, I'm just saying," she said. I nodded, empathizing, but of course not really, and meanwhile, sipped my prickly pear margarita and took bites of butternut squash lasagne and potato-tomatillo tacos and squash flower blossom quesadillas and looked around, at all the aged hippies who all seemed to know one another and actually really care. Not to say that I don't care, of course I do, I was there. But I felt sheepish; I had donated strategically, during a giveaway. I always do. And I always donate during Good Food so that I get invited to a dinner. I don't give purely out of the goodness of my heart. I kind of want a meal prepared by Evan Kleinman and I kind of harbor a fantasy of being friends with her and getting invited to her house for dinner and like sipping Friulian Tocai and talking to her about her show.
So, fine. I'm not completely altruistic. But, God, that beet gnocchi. Possibly one of the most amazing things I have ever eaten.
Yesterday at the KCRW fundraiser dinner a woman turned to me and said bitterly, "I'm so annoyed about dating guys who don't eat this or don't eat that. Evan needs to put together a dating site for Good Food listeners or like KCRW listeners. I don't want to end up with someone who doesn't eat mushrooms and beets and cheese and listens to like Mariah Carey."
"You dated someone who listens to Mariah Carey?" I asked incredulously.
"No, I'm just saying," she said. I nodded, empathizing, but of course not really, and meanwhile, sipped my prickly pear margarita and took bites of butternut squash lasagne and potato-tomatillo tacos and squash flower blossom quesadillas and looked around, at all the aged hippies who all seemed to know one another and actually really care. Not to say that I don't care, of course I do, I was there. But I felt sheepish; I had donated strategically, during a giveaway. I always do. And I always donate during Good Food so that I get invited to a dinner. I don't give purely out of the goodness of my heart. I kind of want a meal prepared by Evan Kleinman and I kind of harbor a fantasy of being friends with her and getting invited to her house for dinner and like sipping Friulian Tocai and talking to her about her show.
So, fine. I'm not completely altruistic. But, God, that beet gnocchi. Possibly one of the most amazing things I have ever eaten.
The woman in the elevator reminded me of the 90s. Her hair was wet, like she was in high school and had gotten up early to catch the bus or something, and she was wearing a plaid shirt. She sighed loudly.
"It's LA," she said, to no one in particular, or I guess maybe to me, because I was the only other person on the elevator, "there is no reason why anyone should work in a building with 31 floors."
I liked her. She was kind of punk and had this palpably defiant energy.
"I hate the 6:00 rush hour where the elevator stops on every floor," I told her.
She laughed, "Yeah, and the freaks who work in this building and ride the elevators with us," she threw back. She reminded me of Tanya on Hung. Except a more defiant Tanya, one who had owned her weirdnessess. I liked this about her.
"See you on the other side," she said as she got out.
Elevators are such a strange place to talk.
"It's LA," she said, to no one in particular, or I guess maybe to me, because I was the only other person on the elevator, "there is no reason why anyone should work in a building with 31 floors."
I liked her. She was kind of punk and had this palpably defiant energy.
"I hate the 6:00 rush hour where the elevator stops on every floor," I told her.
She laughed, "Yeah, and the freaks who work in this building and ride the elevators with us," she threw back. She reminded me of Tanya on Hung. Except a more defiant Tanya, one who had owned her weirdnessess. I liked this about her.
"See you on the other side," she said as she got out.
Elevators are such a strange place to talk.
Monday, September 21, 2009
In Los Angeles Plays Itself, Thom Anderson quizzically asks why Los Angeles County police cars have the words "To Serve and Protect" written on their sides in quotation marks, like the entire police force is in on the irony of their profession. On days like this, I understand the need for those quotation marks.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Lovely Day
phone call home, yoga, brunch, the nice Palestinian man at the farmer's market insisting that I take home several containers of Middle Eastern specialties (I swear, ethnic food vendors are always giving me free stuff), The September Issue, writing, more writing, coffee, a cigarette, running into lovely people from college (does all of Brown live in Silverlake/Los Feliz?), Middle Eastern specialties spill into my car, cleaning labneh grease and lime pickle grease off the carpet, finishing Alain de Botton, a glass of Lillet blanc with a slice of orange, a baby mache and arugula salad with parmesan shavings, avocado, orange, almonds and green onion, baked meringues with strawberries for dessert. A movie, haven't decided which one yet. All in all, a good day.
“I think I got left behind somewhere; I seem to be the only romantic left.”
-Grace Coddington, Creative Director, American Vogue
At the end of the day, Coddington is the real heroine of The September Issue, in part because Anna Wintour remains inscrutable to the end. Wintour's mask never quite comes off; even the one real moment of vulnerability, where she talks about how her civic-minded siblings find what she does for a living absurd seems manufactured, her wistfulness stretched out with the use of sad music and long camera shots of her gazing off into space for a moment. Coddington, by contrast, is not only accessible, but remarkably authentic for someone working in the fashion industry, much less someone who is responsible for the creative direction of American Vogue. You also see that American Vogue is largely a product of Coddington's artistic vision; that without her aesthetic genius, there really would be no magazine.
Go see The September Issue. Even if you don't read Vogue. Even if you're not into fashion. it's kind of a great documentary.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Seriously, go see Bright Star, people. Normally, I'm so wrapped up in the discursive elements of a film - the sound, the dialogue, the cinematography, the composition of certain shots that it's hard to pull me out of my meditative film trance. But this film was so engaging, and yet so technically perfect. It had soul, but it was also so precise. There are some movies where I walk out of the theater and want my money back. This one, I would have paid double to see.
Also, I love Jane Campion. And I kind of want to look like her when I'm old. You know, except for the white part.
The man was old, and clearly homeless. He was standing outside Swork in a torn jacket. He was staring at the ground in front of him, at a pile of pennies someone had left behind.
Maybe he could tell I was watching him, but when he looked up and smiled, it was disarming. He was handsome, or had been once. He had a big white beard, and his skin was leathery and tan, but he had the kind of charming smile that old Hollywood matinee actors have and bright eyes. He looked like someone who smiled a lot, or should, like a smile was the only expression that truly made sense on his face.
"Someone left behind a pile of pennies," he said, "just left them on the street." I nodded, looked at the pennies.
"It's a sign of the times, you know. In my time, in the old days, people just didn't do that." I nodded again, wondering about his time, wondering where he was from, where he had been, how he ended up here. Did he have a family? Did he have kids? Who did he talk to on hard days?
He smiled again. "Well, you have a nice day now," he said, and he waved. Sort of.
"You too," I said. And I started walking towards my car. There was already a new moon in the sky.
"New Moon in Virgo" was the title of the email my friend had sent me. "Make sure you perform a fire ceremony tonight," it said. Perhaps I would light a candle. I would send a wish to the man from another time who was perplexed, and yet still smiling, at the signs of our time.
Maybe he could tell I was watching him, but when he looked up and smiled, it was disarming. He was handsome, or had been once. He had a big white beard, and his skin was leathery and tan, but he had the kind of charming smile that old Hollywood matinee actors have and bright eyes. He looked like someone who smiled a lot, or should, like a smile was the only expression that truly made sense on his face.
"Someone left behind a pile of pennies," he said, "just left them on the street." I nodded, looked at the pennies.
"It's a sign of the times, you know. In my time, in the old days, people just didn't do that." I nodded again, wondering about his time, wondering where he was from, where he had been, how he ended up here. Did he have a family? Did he have kids? Who did he talk to on hard days?
He smiled again. "Well, you have a nice day now," he said, and he waved. Sort of.
"You too," I said. And I started walking towards my car. There was already a new moon in the sky.
"New Moon in Virgo" was the title of the email my friend had sent me. "Make sure you perform a fire ceremony tonight," it said. Perhaps I would light a candle. I would send a wish to the man from another time who was perplexed, and yet still smiling, at the signs of our time.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Cravings
Timelessness
Sun. On every inch of my body.
Digging my fingers in sand.
Sleep. 8 hours of it.
Fall. But in New England. With red and orange leaves.
Home. Not the physical location of it, but the feeling.
Yellow, the memory of mustard fields in Copenhagen.
Summer. But in Italy. Or India. or Cuba.
But not necesarily having to travel there in person.
Just in my mind.
Most things that take place in my mind are better anyway.
But not all.
To be understood. Wordlessly.
And with ease.
Stillness.
and to be able to make peace.
with all of it.
Sun. On every inch of my body.
Digging my fingers in sand.
Sleep. 8 hours of it.
Fall. But in New England. With red and orange leaves.
Home. Not the physical location of it, but the feeling.
Yellow, the memory of mustard fields in Copenhagen.
Summer. But in Italy. Or India. or Cuba.
But not necesarily having to travel there in person.
Just in my mind.
Most things that take place in my mind are better anyway.
But not all.
To be understood. Wordlessly.
And with ease.
Stillness.
and to be able to make peace.
with all of it.
A big man with wire-rimmed glasses, a booming laugh and a penchant for the experimental, Jung was interested in the psychological aspects of séances, of astrology, of witchcraft. He could be jocular and also impatient. He was a dynamic speaker, an empathic listener. He had a famously magnetic appeal with women. Working at Zurich’s Burghölzli psychiatric hospital, Jung listened intently to the ravings of schizophrenics, believing they held clues to both personal and universal truths. At home, in his spare time, he pored over Dante, Goethe, Swedenborg and Nietzsche. He began to study mythology and world cultures, applying what he learned to the live feed from the unconscious — claiming that dreams offered a rich and symbolic narrative coming from the depths of the psyche. Somewhere along the way, he started to view the human soul — not just the mind and the body — as requiring specific care and development, an idea that pushed him into a province long occupied by poets and priests but not so much by medical doctors and empirical scientists.
Jung soon found himself in opposition not just to Freud but also to most of his field, the psychiatrists who constituted the dominant culture at the time, speaking the clinical language of symptom and diagnosis behind the deadbolts of asylum wards. Separation was not easy. As his convictions began to crystallize, Jung, who was at that point an outwardly successful and ambitious man with a young family, a thriving private practice and a big, elegant house on the shores of Lake Zurich, felt his own psyche starting to teeter and slide, until finally he was dumped into what would become a life-altering crisis.
What happened next to Carl Jung has become, among Jungians and other scholars, the topic of enduring legend and controversy. It has been characterized variously as a creative illness, a descent into the underworld, a bout with insanity, a narcissistic self-deification, a transcendence, a midlife breakdown and an inner disturbance mirroring the upheaval of World War I. Whatever the case, in 1913, Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.”
He later would compare this period of his life — this “confrontation with the unconscious,” as he called it — to a mescaline experiment. He described his visions as coming in an “incessant stream.” He likened them to rocks falling on his head, to thunderstorms, to molten lava. “I often had to cling to the table,” he recalled, “so as not to fall apart.”
Jung soon found himself in opposition not just to Freud but also to most of his field, the psychiatrists who constituted the dominant culture at the time, speaking the clinical language of symptom and diagnosis behind the deadbolts of asylum wards. Separation was not easy. As his convictions began to crystallize, Jung, who was at that point an outwardly successful and ambitious man with a young family, a thriving private practice and a big, elegant house on the shores of Lake Zurich, felt his own psyche starting to teeter and slide, until finally he was dumped into what would become a life-altering crisis.
What happened next to Carl Jung has become, among Jungians and other scholars, the topic of enduring legend and controversy. It has been characterized variously as a creative illness, a descent into the underworld, a bout with insanity, a narcissistic self-deification, a transcendence, a midlife breakdown and an inner disturbance mirroring the upheaval of World War I. Whatever the case, in 1913, Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.”
He later would compare this period of his life — this “confrontation with the unconscious,” as he called it — to a mescaline experiment. He described his visions as coming in an “incessant stream.” He likened them to rocks falling on his head, to thunderstorms, to molten lava. “I often had to cling to the table,” he recalled, “so as not to fall apart.”
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Ode to Peggy Olson
Peggy Olson, I feel your disappointments so acutely.If you were a real person (and you lived in LA) I would make sure we were friends.
Today, especially, in the midst of drudgework I think of you.
It's a different kind of bullshit now, but still bullshit.
And I keep thinking of friday when I will do two hours of yoga and then
situate myself with a cup of coffee
in some unfortunate hipster coffee shop
with headphones
so I can do my real work
and think about characters like you.
If this book of mine fails to take a straight course, it is because I am lost in a strange region: I have no map. I sometimes wonder whether anything that I am putting down here is true. I felt that afternoon such complete trust when she said to me suddenly, without being questioned, “I’ve never loved anybody or anything as I do you.” It was as if, sitting there in the chair with a half-eaten sandwich in her hand, she was abandoning herself as completely as she had done, five minutes back, on the hardwood floor. We most of us hesitate to make so complete a statement - we remember and we foresee and we doubt. She had no doubts. The moment only mattered. Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space. What did time matter - all the past and the other men she may from time to time (there is that word again) have known, or all the future in which she might be making the same statement with the same sense of truth? When I replied that I loved her too in that way, I was the liar, not she, for I never lose the consciousness of time: to me the present is never here: it is always last year or next week.
-Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
-Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
Dream
An old co-worker invites me to dinner at the Bonventure. I get in my car and go. When I arrive at the valet stand, three valets are waiting for me. I get out of the car and the three of them get in.
"It might take us a while," one of them says.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"Come look," says another one.
I get back in the car, only now the interior of my car has become a house. A huge mid-century modern house with massive glass walls. I wonder why I never noticed this before. The house is full of boxes, like IKEA boxes of furniture that haven't been installed yet.
"I should have finished with the furniture," I tell them.
"Sometimes you need help," one of them says. They start breaking down the boxes, building the furniture. When they are done, the house is full of midcentury furniture, Le Corbusier daybeds and Barcelona chairs. I tip the valets extra and they leave. A few minutes later my mother walks in.
"You're late to dinner," she says.
"I know. The valets were building my furniture," I tell her, "I should have done it myself a long time ago."
"That's okay," she says, "Sometimes you need help. What were you doing all this time though?" she asks.
"Chasing things," I tell her.
"That's how it is," she says, "But now you know."
"Now I have the freedom to travel within and without. I am boundless, like my name," I tell her.
"That's maturity," she says, "Now you know that your happiness can't be diminished by externals."
"What if I forget?" I ask her.
"Then you can come back here. It was always here, in your car, this beautiful house. But you weren't looking at it properly."
"It might take us a while," one of them says.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"Come look," says another one.
I get back in the car, only now the interior of my car has become a house. A huge mid-century modern house with massive glass walls. I wonder why I never noticed this before. The house is full of boxes, like IKEA boxes of furniture that haven't been installed yet.
"I should have finished with the furniture," I tell them.
"Sometimes you need help," one of them says. They start breaking down the boxes, building the furniture. When they are done, the house is full of midcentury furniture, Le Corbusier daybeds and Barcelona chairs. I tip the valets extra and they leave. A few minutes later my mother walks in.
"You're late to dinner," she says.
"I know. The valets were building my furniture," I tell her, "I should have done it myself a long time ago."
"That's okay," she says, "Sometimes you need help. What were you doing all this time though?" she asks.
"Chasing things," I tell her.
"That's how it is," she says, "But now you know."
"Now I have the freedom to travel within and without. I am boundless, like my name," I tell her.
"That's maturity," she says, "Now you know that your happiness can't be diminished by externals."
"What if I forget?" I ask her.
"Then you can come back here. It was always here, in your car, this beautiful house. But you weren't looking at it properly."
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Note to self
The idea of something is not the something in question. Make this your mantra. Say it to yourself every day. Understanding this, knowing this, is perhaps your greatest challenge in life since you inhabit a world of ideas and deem it far superior to the world of reality (which, quite honestly, it is). Whatever far-fetched fantasy you're entertaining at the moment, stop it. Stop it right now. Seriously, what are you, 14? Kind of. Except maybe even less courageous than when you were 14. And far more aware of consequences. I once knew a guy who consistently teetered on the edge of the racism cliff, always about to fall right off, but not quite. I would tense up around him, not sure if today was the day of the big jump. Now I see my own personal cliff. It has nothing to do with race. But it is just as fucking scary. I think about the jump and I tense. No good will come of this. Do not jump. Stop. Turn back. There will be no jump. Get back in your fucking car and drive away from the fucking cliff. As K would say, "Stop it Khorans. Stop it stop it sopt it stop it." Okay, okay. I am.
It is the living who cannot
It is the living who cannot
live without the dead,
who wish them
back,
who need their presences,
their hands,
as Orpheus
held her hand, Eurydice’s,
to lead her
back to earth out of
the gulf of Hades,
as I
need yours
It is not so much
the dead
who need us
now
(as we think they do)
& that reconciliation
we long for, that knowledge
of each other to the uttermost,
which could assuage us,
they are
one step beyond it & suffer us
to long for them.
If they could
return, it would be out of
patience with us merely: their need to
console us. For somehow an indifference
possesses them, for all their tenderness
& they see beyond us,
even if
what they see seems to us
nothing
-Hilda Morley
live without the dead,
who wish them
back,
who need their presences,
their hands,
as Orpheus
held her hand, Eurydice’s,
to lead her
back to earth out of
the gulf of Hades,
as I
need yours
It is not so much
the dead
who need us
now
(as we think they do)
& that reconciliation
we long for, that knowledge
of each other to the uttermost,
which could assuage us,
they are
one step beyond it & suffer us
to long for them.
If they could
return, it would be out of
patience with us merely: their need to
console us. For somehow an indifference
possesses them, for all their tenderness
& they see beyond us,
even if
what they see seems to us
nothing
-Hilda Morley
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Odd things bees are attracted to
Lemons, butter, French men that look like Ludo Lefebvre and talk incessantly and loudly about American TV, knees, Fresh litchi sugar perfume, copies of Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life, orange RISD bags, glasses of Rose.
Two days ago, I liberated a bee from a glass of Rose, and ungratefully, she came back for more. I flagged down the waiter. "There was a bee in my Rose but I fished her out and she flew away. Now she's at the next table. Can I have another glass?" He gave me a French look and took the glass away wordlessly.
I don't understand the shrieking reactions people have to bugs, jumping at the sight of spiders, ducking away from bees, squealing at the sight of cockroaches. I generally scoop them up in a piece of paper and toss them outside the front door. Perhaps I haven't been socialized properly as a girl/woman. But I can't bring myself to shriek and make a scene.
Two weeks ago there was an article about a man who travels the world and documents insect stings. he characterizes the pain the way some people catalog wines, "an ache, a tender burn, a sharp, quick razor cut." He has no associates, no colleagues willing to confirm his findings. Such lonely and painful work. It sounds almost as bad as writing.
Two days ago, I liberated a bee from a glass of Rose, and ungratefully, she came back for more. I flagged down the waiter. "There was a bee in my Rose but I fished her out and she flew away. Now she's at the next table. Can I have another glass?" He gave me a French look and took the glass away wordlessly.
I don't understand the shrieking reactions people have to bugs, jumping at the sight of spiders, ducking away from bees, squealing at the sight of cockroaches. I generally scoop them up in a piece of paper and toss them outside the front door. Perhaps I haven't been socialized properly as a girl/woman. But I can't bring myself to shriek and make a scene.
Two weeks ago there was an article about a man who travels the world and documents insect stings. he characterizes the pain the way some people catalog wines, "an ache, a tender burn, a sharp, quick razor cut." He has no associates, no colleagues willing to confirm his findings. Such lonely and painful work. It sounds almost as bad as writing.
The questions began...how did we go wrong? Where did we go wrong? Although Los Angeles is a city with no history, nostalgia has always been the dominant note in the city's image of itself. In any time in its history, Los Angeles was always a better place a long time ago than in the present.
-Thom Anderson, Los Angeles Plays Itself
-Thom Anderson, Los Angeles Plays Itself
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
I often wonder if others are as concerned with the fact that you can only be situated in one literal place; am I properly making the few choices about meaning and direction in my limited years of youth?
And I think about youth, because I have always been young, but not very often youthful. I've never, even in the most joyful, euphoric times, been able to shake the old woman who resides in me.
And you can't really laugh over Americans and their strange American poverty. I am healed by the abundance of absurd things, plastic bottles and the silk bags that shoes come in. This place and its excess of tiny plastic or metal or shiny things. But it is a different kind of healing, a masking of real symptoms. The odd delight in the cheap and useless.
In the attic of my parents' house is a collection of empty tin boxes, cookie tins, chocolate tins. Once, when I was home, I collected them to donate to the Salvation Army, but my father looked at the tins and hesitated. Then I remembered that we come from a different place. Money doesn't change anything. That's not bad. Even these little things, small hesitations say something poignant.
The one time I was laid off, I went straight to the grocery store and bought $100 worth of groceries. But I was not wise or strategic about this; it wasn't canned stuff that would last. It was mostly perishables: avocados, limes, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes. To have that privilege of manufacturing worries, the luxury of privately dramatic incidents that are later documented, painstakingly. I knew I wouldn't starve.
I've asked this question before: am I where I should be? Sometimes, I am one with time. Once in a while, time and I agree. And then it doesn't matter, the specifics of what I am doing or saying, or who I am with. A wedding in Malibu, picking cherries in an orchard, the ocean, the preparation of a meal. Sitting with myself. Maybe I am just dramatic. I am well more often than I am not. I am at peace more often than I am not. I write it all out. I pour it into a space outside of myself. This is how I survive. This is my only addiction.
And then, a moment that wrenches my stomach, the painful twist of time. And then it is gone. Breathe. You are not youthful. You are wholly too porous. You are not disaffected, even if you can pretend it once in a while. And you are not immune to life.
What does it mean, what does it mean? What does it all mean?
And I think about youth, because I have always been young, but not very often youthful. I've never, even in the most joyful, euphoric times, been able to shake the old woman who resides in me.
And you can't really laugh over Americans and their strange American poverty. I am healed by the abundance of absurd things, plastic bottles and the silk bags that shoes come in. This place and its excess of tiny plastic or metal or shiny things. But it is a different kind of healing, a masking of real symptoms. The odd delight in the cheap and useless.
In the attic of my parents' house is a collection of empty tin boxes, cookie tins, chocolate tins. Once, when I was home, I collected them to donate to the Salvation Army, but my father looked at the tins and hesitated. Then I remembered that we come from a different place. Money doesn't change anything. That's not bad. Even these little things, small hesitations say something poignant.
The one time I was laid off, I went straight to the grocery store and bought $100 worth of groceries. But I was not wise or strategic about this; it wasn't canned stuff that would last. It was mostly perishables: avocados, limes, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes. To have that privilege of manufacturing worries, the luxury of privately dramatic incidents that are later documented, painstakingly. I knew I wouldn't starve.
I've asked this question before: am I where I should be? Sometimes, I am one with time. Once in a while, time and I agree. And then it doesn't matter, the specifics of what I am doing or saying, or who I am with. A wedding in Malibu, picking cherries in an orchard, the ocean, the preparation of a meal. Sitting with myself. Maybe I am just dramatic. I am well more often than I am not. I am at peace more often than I am not. I write it all out. I pour it into a space outside of myself. This is how I survive. This is my only addiction.
And then, a moment that wrenches my stomach, the painful twist of time. And then it is gone. Breathe. You are not youthful. You are wholly too porous. You are not disaffected, even if you can pretend it once in a while. And you are not immune to life.
What does it mean, what does it mean? What does it all mean?
Overheard
Nerd #1: I have a really good JPL story. This is like my favorite JPL story.
Nerd #2: Oh my God, I love JPL stories.
Nerd #1: Apparently in the 70s, these guys stole all these materials from JPL and built an all-stainless-steel RV.
Nerd #2: I mean, what do you even do with that?
Nerd #3: That's such an old retired engineering professor story, dude. Its like what you do when you're smart and have tons of time.
Nerd #1: I know! I have so many ridiculous JPL stories. That place is crazy (unanimous laughter).
Nerd #3: something something, network properties, something something fiberoptic network (shut up, cappuccino maker!) something RSS feed. Look at that something hydro-cumulous fire cloud.
Nerd #2: Something encrypted. Something Galileo's Sun. Something Linux. Something something hardware ID.
Nerd #1: I'm glad I picked MIT over Caltech.
Nerd #2: One of the supercomputers I was working on got hacked into by this guy from Finland.
Nerd #1: Yeah, some guy hacked into my computer. I was running algorithms and it would text me something something black mission. I asked my friend, tell me as much as you can legally tell me about a black mission and he was like, you know, it's not even that complicated.
Nerd #3: Galileo's almost 30 gigs now! AND THAT'S NOT EVEN DATA!!!
I don't type fast enough.
Nerd #2: Oh my God, I love JPL stories.
Nerd #1: Apparently in the 70s, these guys stole all these materials from JPL and built an all-stainless-steel RV.
Nerd #2: I mean, what do you even do with that?
Nerd #3: That's such an old retired engineering professor story, dude. Its like what you do when you're smart and have tons of time.
Nerd #1: I know! I have so many ridiculous JPL stories. That place is crazy (unanimous laughter).
Nerd #3: something something, network properties, something something fiberoptic network (shut up, cappuccino maker!) something RSS feed. Look at that something hydro-cumulous fire cloud.
Nerd #2: Something encrypted. Something Galileo's Sun. Something Linux. Something something hardware ID.
Nerd #1: I'm glad I picked MIT over Caltech.
Nerd #2: One of the supercomputers I was working on got hacked into by this guy from Finland.
Nerd #1: Yeah, some guy hacked into my computer. I was running algorithms and it would text me something something black mission. I asked my friend, tell me as much as you can legally tell me about a black mission and he was like, you know, it's not even that complicated.
Nerd #3: Galileo's almost 30 gigs now! AND THAT'S NOT EVEN DATA!!!
I don't type fast enough.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Dream
My entire family gets on a plane. When we check our seat numbers my mother is perplexed.
"You're not with the rest of us, you're in a different section. That's not good."
I look at my seat number: 1b. I make my way to the front of the plane. 1b. It's the seat next to the pilot, who is perched in front of a steering wheel, like the wheel of a car.
"Welcome," he tells me. It looks like you're my co-captain."
I look around, then back at the open plane. We're not in an enclosed cabin. People are going to be watching us fly this thing, apparently.
"I can't be your co-captain. I've never flown a plane before."
"Neither have I," he says. "I work at Home Depot. In fact, that's where we're going right now."
I look back at the passengers, trying to make eye contact with anyone who heard that. They all did, but they seem to find nothing absurd about it. This is oddly frustrating, but it reminds me of life sometimes, no one to raise an eyebrow with when something strange is articulated.
So we drive the plane to Home Depot. We take surface streets, driving over curbs, knocking over stop signs. When we get there, the captain parks the plane in the parking lot. We go in and he helps people select light dimmers and garden hoses and door knobs.
"Looks like we won't have to fly to Vietnam after all," he says.
"Why not?" I ask
"Because everyone found what they needed right here." And it's true. Everyone has forgotten where they were supposed to go, what they bought tickets for. Everyone looks perfectly content, perusing the aisles of Home Depot, looking for garden shears and paint brushes.
"You're not with the rest of us, you're in a different section. That's not good."
I look at my seat number: 1b. I make my way to the front of the plane. 1b. It's the seat next to the pilot, who is perched in front of a steering wheel, like the wheel of a car.
"Welcome," he tells me. It looks like you're my co-captain."
I look around, then back at the open plane. We're not in an enclosed cabin. People are going to be watching us fly this thing, apparently.
"I can't be your co-captain. I've never flown a plane before."
"Neither have I," he says. "I work at Home Depot. In fact, that's where we're going right now."
I look back at the passengers, trying to make eye contact with anyone who heard that. They all did, but they seem to find nothing absurd about it. This is oddly frustrating, but it reminds me of life sometimes, no one to raise an eyebrow with when something strange is articulated.
So we drive the plane to Home Depot. We take surface streets, driving over curbs, knocking over stop signs. When we get there, the captain parks the plane in the parking lot. We go in and he helps people select light dimmers and garden hoses and door knobs.
"Looks like we won't have to fly to Vietnam after all," he says.
"Why not?" I ask
"Because everyone found what they needed right here." And it's true. Everyone has forgotten where they were supposed to go, what they bought tickets for. Everyone looks perfectly content, perusing the aisles of Home Depot, looking for garden shears and paint brushes.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Mr. Kennedy said that his father had encouraged intensive competition among his children, especially his sons, which fed his recurrent feelings of inadequacy after the death of his three brothers, all of them older.
“Competition, of course, is the route to achievement in America,” Mr. Kennedy wrote. “As I think back to my three brothers, and about what they had accomplished before I was even out of my childhood, it sometimes has occurred to me that my entire life has been a constant state of catching up.”
“Competition, of course, is the route to achievement in America,” Mr. Kennedy wrote. “As I think back to my three brothers, and about what they had accomplished before I was even out of my childhood, it sometimes has occurred to me that my entire life has been a constant state of catching up.”
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
One curious footnote, though. After writing the screenplay, I met up with Jenny for the first and only time since we broke up. We had dinner in Venice Beach, California. We talked about life, friends, everything - but not about what had happened between us.
I gave her the script to read on the flight back to London. Some time later she wrote me a letter. She loved the story, she said. It had surprised and moved her because she really related to Tom. Yes, incredibly, Jenny hadn't recognised herself as Summer at all.
I gave her the script to read on the flight back to London. Some time later she wrote me a letter. She loved the story, she said. It had surprised and moved her because she really related to Tom. Yes, incredibly, Jenny hadn't recognised herself as Summer at all.
Anklet
It is hand hammered and slightly broken and distressed silver with tiny bells. It is heavy on my ankle.
"I don't know," I tell the jeweler. "It's beautiful but too much. Too much of what I like. Maybe I even like it too much." It is a sad anklet. You can tell by looking at it.
"You come here every year," he says. "Your mother did too. And your grandmother. I remember her."
Maybe this is his way of offloading the anklet on me. But he's right. My mother used to buy jewelry here. And my grandmother before her. People remember my mother and grandmother. They have that kind of presence. My mother is with me. She rolls her eyes. She doesn't buy into that kind of bullshit.
"It's made for you, broken and distressed and antique. Most people don't like this kind of jewelry. Most people like new and shiny," he says. I don't know if this is entirely true or if he's just a really good salesman.
"Can we have a minute?" I ask him. I turn to my mom.
"It probably belonged to some poor villager or farmer. Probably had to be sold to pay off debts. It is a sad piece," she says, reading my mind. She picks it up, assess it in her hand, shakes her head.
"But someone is going to buy it eventually. And it is an unusual piece. But you'll have to bury it in the earth for five days to get the energy out. Then you can wear it."
Bury it in the Earth. But where can I bury it? I could bury it in my backyard space, but I'm convinced there are weird chemicals in the ground near my house. That's why the tangerines from the tangerine tree taste metallic.
I can't bury it in the park down the street, someone will find it. Finally, I bury it in the terra cota pot of the money plant in the living room. I use a spoon. Then I wait for it to forget its past, forget its story. I wait for the anklet to be reborn without the memory of its past life, without the memory of a sad separation from its owner. Who did it belong to, this sad, pretty hand-made piece? I imagine her as a woman who lives in the desert and wears antique silver jewelry and speaks a Rajasthani dialect. I imagine her in bright cotton saris, magenta and orange and yellow. I imagine how sad she was to have to sell the anklet to pay her debts, the anklet that had been in her family for five generations. This is the story I choose to believe. I thank her for trusting me with anklet, and I tell her I'll take care of it and think of her when I wear it.
I unearth the anklet five days later and wash off the dirt. It is less sad now, and ready to start its new life. This is why I like old things. Everything means a little bit more when it has a story.
"I don't know," I tell the jeweler. "It's beautiful but too much. Too much of what I like. Maybe I even like it too much." It is a sad anklet. You can tell by looking at it.
"You come here every year," he says. "Your mother did too. And your grandmother. I remember her."
Maybe this is his way of offloading the anklet on me. But he's right. My mother used to buy jewelry here. And my grandmother before her. People remember my mother and grandmother. They have that kind of presence. My mother is with me. She rolls her eyes. She doesn't buy into that kind of bullshit.
"It's made for you, broken and distressed and antique. Most people don't like this kind of jewelry. Most people like new and shiny," he says. I don't know if this is entirely true or if he's just a really good salesman.
"Can we have a minute?" I ask him. I turn to my mom.
"It probably belonged to some poor villager or farmer. Probably had to be sold to pay off debts. It is a sad piece," she says, reading my mind. She picks it up, assess it in her hand, shakes her head.
"But someone is going to buy it eventually. And it is an unusual piece. But you'll have to bury it in the earth for five days to get the energy out. Then you can wear it."
Bury it in the Earth. But where can I bury it? I could bury it in my backyard space, but I'm convinced there are weird chemicals in the ground near my house. That's why the tangerines from the tangerine tree taste metallic.
I can't bury it in the park down the street, someone will find it. Finally, I bury it in the terra cota pot of the money plant in the living room. I use a spoon. Then I wait for it to forget its past, forget its story. I wait for the anklet to be reborn without the memory of its past life, without the memory of a sad separation from its owner. Who did it belong to, this sad, pretty hand-made piece? I imagine her as a woman who lives in the desert and wears antique silver jewelry and speaks a Rajasthani dialect. I imagine her in bright cotton saris, magenta and orange and yellow. I imagine how sad she was to have to sell the anklet to pay her debts, the anklet that had been in her family for five generations. This is the story I choose to believe. I thank her for trusting me with anklet, and I tell her I'll take care of it and think of her when I wear it.
I unearth the anklet five days later and wash off the dirt. It is less sad now, and ready to start its new life. This is why I like old things. Everything means a little bit more when it has a story.
Consequent Realities
My love is studying
Anatomy and I
Am a dilettante resuscitating
The moaning anomie
Of postmillennial drudgework
Into daily veer
As Watts teenagers writhe
And jolt like the victims of electricity
We diminish them
To be, an earnest rage born
Of the absurd, a fit
Response to an irresponsible
Age, each morning’s paper
Soaked in a bloom
Of limbs, each ironing
Wretch wrought by the incidentals
Of a life unwittingly
Defended by a spectacle
Of death, I myself often
Pass this
Way with my hands
Over my eyes, hopelessly
Mired by the gross
Mitigation of routine
As the recursion of the
Spreadsheet self
Grows misty, harmonies
Invade, the Voyager
Ages in direct
Proportion to my own ungainly
Orbit and literature wreaks
Its unstoppable
Pageant of obituaries
On the American lunch
Break, my great
Grandfather was adopted
At the Battle of Wounded Knee
And I called him Bernie
And I swear we will not be confined
To pale little moments
Of exuberance or the inexhaustible
Shifting of these consequent
Realities, it is impossible
To measure how
Often the phantom
Limbs of memory return bent
On self-mutilation, nails
That aren’t there firmly dug
Into a palm that no
Longer exists, though it
Does, has, always
Will it seems, aligned
With the body’s bewildering
Pulse, the eye’s fiery
Recapitulation of difference
And who will stand
With us against the relativism
Of sensory input? When
Is it but constantly
That these assumptions threaten
To overtake us? Who deigns
To bring my love
And me something to wear we feel
Like getting out of bed.
-Chris Martin (no not that Chris Martin, this one)
Anatomy and I
Am a dilettante resuscitating
The moaning anomie
Of postmillennial drudgework
Into daily veer
As Watts teenagers writhe
And jolt like the victims of electricity
We diminish them
To be, an earnest rage born
Of the absurd, a fit
Response to an irresponsible
Age, each morning’s paper
Soaked in a bloom
Of limbs, each ironing
Wretch wrought by the incidentals
Of a life unwittingly
Defended by a spectacle
Of death, I myself often
Pass this
Way with my hands
Over my eyes, hopelessly
Mired by the gross
Mitigation of routine
As the recursion of the
Spreadsheet self
Grows misty, harmonies
Invade, the Voyager
Ages in direct
Proportion to my own ungainly
Orbit and literature wreaks
Its unstoppable
Pageant of obituaries
On the American lunch
Break, my great
Grandfather was adopted
At the Battle of Wounded Knee
And I called him Bernie
And I swear we will not be confined
To pale little moments
Of exuberance or the inexhaustible
Shifting of these consequent
Realities, it is impossible
To measure how
Often the phantom
Limbs of memory return bent
On self-mutilation, nails
That aren’t there firmly dug
Into a palm that no
Longer exists, though it
Does, has, always
Will it seems, aligned
With the body’s bewildering
Pulse, the eye’s fiery
Recapitulation of difference
And who will stand
With us against the relativism
Of sensory input? When
Is it but constantly
That these assumptions threaten
To overtake us? Who deigns
To bring my love
And me something to wear we feel
Like getting out of bed.
-Chris Martin (no not that Chris Martin, this one)
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