In the course of writing and making the film the recession took hold just as Mr. Reitman and his wife began having children, which got him thinking about the homes and families torn apart by layoffs. The film, with its idealized depiction of air travel that leads to brutal consequences, suggests that while we can now go almost anywhere in a heartbeat, where exactly are we headed?

“I’m very at home here. Look, I get to see a plane take off over your shoulders every few minutes, which is always exciting for me,” he said, gesturing to the tarmac as we settle in to a booth at T.G.I. Friday’s. “It would be fine for me to sit down at the bar, approach anyone here and talk to them about stuff and learn about their lives. The rest of the world turns off, no one expects anything of you, and I talk to strangers, I learn about lives I would never otherwise know about.”

That may sound a bit affected, a postmodern accommodation of a peripatetic existence, but Mr. Reitman looks at home in the booth even though he grew up in and around Los Angeles as the son of the Hollywood director and producer Ivan Reitman, who is a producer on the film and whose company put up half of the $25 million budget.

“All the airports kind of feel and look the same now,” Mr. Reitman said, grabbing one of the small burgers in the middle of the table. “Some are more beautiful, some are less beautiful, but for the most part you’re going to find a Starbucks in every airport. You’re going to get your coffee and the USA Today or New York Times in every airport. All the things that you want are there, so you can land anywhere, and you feel at home. You’re given the sense that you’re everywhere, but you’re nowhere; that you are constantly with your community, yet you have no community. There’s kind of a terrific irony to that.”

It is a short metaphorical walk, Mr. Reitman suggests, from the temporary bonhomie of airports to the social networks proliferating through our wired society.

“Technology works the same way. Things like Facebook have made you feel as though you’re connected to everybody,” he said, indicating his iPhone. “You’ve got a thousand friends on Facebook, but you don’t actually talk to anybody. You’re not close to anybody.”

so odd and mesmerizing...

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

False Script

Instead of a finish line, we must all arrive at the happy medium of normalcy. Pretty girls must be self-deprecating, in order to resist offending anyone with their mere presence. Sensitive boys must espouse a kind of overconfidence so no one can call them pussies. In the end, we must maintain a fine balance in the collective decision to appear nonthreatening, without entirely diminishing our personal presence. We maintain this balance on a hairpin, keeping our fingers crossed that no one will look behind the curtain during intermission, that no one will see us memorizing our lines at night, alone in our apartments, that no one will lean against the set and realize that all of it is an empty shell made of plaster. And maybe it doesn't even matter, because alone, in our dreams, we are real.

The Male Gaze

This happens to you when you are in your early twenties, on that threshold of becoming a woman. I cringe as I write that last expression. You are in an elevator or at the airport or on the subway and men look at you in a way that is unnerving. They flirt shamelessly, without looking away, as though to test you. And even though they have no real interest in who you are, you feel especially compelled to guard your interior life in these moments, because you know that this is the only part of you that isn't entirely accessible to someone else. Theoretically. Sometimes it's older men, other times it's particularly confident boys your age, but regardless, they don't know that you're still a girl; that is to say, you're not common yet. You haven't learned to shut out the world, and people when it's necessary. You haven't learned to assess others in an instant, to look them up and down and know their intentions, their motives, their way of moving through the world. You don't know yet when it is appropriate to blend in and when it is beneficial to stand out. Because these are the things, the little tricks you learn as you become. And you simply haven't become yet, and you don't even know what this means. You are so vulnerable and bare and new to this world that your very presence in it is bewildering.

I can't speak to what it's like for men. Because they seem to know how to navigate these situations. They don't just navigate them, they create them. They are particularly skilled in groups. In a group of women, they turn themselves into a prize. And in a group of men, there is a kind of majesty in the power of their collective maleness.

And when you're young, you simply don't know what to do with this. Except feel slightly afraid. And slightly unhinged.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still, 1978

Paradox

Musicians and writers and artists are generally more caught up in their own notions of reality than the reality that is presented to them by the outside world. We're generally more engaged by what goes on in our own heads than what goes on around us. Which leads to a somewhat solipsistic view of the world.

We also get off on being misunderstood. We're kind of used to it, and even though we complain about it and talk ceaselessly about how desperate we are for meaningful connection, the truth is, when we actually do feel truly understood, maybe even worldlessly, we kind of don't know what to do with that feeling, we're so terribly unaccustomed to it. It makes us uncomfortable, like someone has invaded our personal psychic space. Something about it feels inauthentic; we want to be left alone again. More like, we want to make a run for it. We feel engulfed and terrified because what we desperately crave feels like a violation of the most personal parts of who we are.

8th and Alameda

Sunday: Mexican candy shopping. Mexican candy is like Indian candy, all sour and spicy enough to make your jaw hurt. I am especially addicted to tamarind in its various candy-incarnations and that sour powder made of citric acid called Acirrico! I could eat this stuff as a meal, just licking it off my fingers. It's so gross and tart and makes your whole face pucker up. I love it.

I also love Mexican food stores. Bins of chilies and lentils and pickled carrots, rows and rows of inconsistently-packaged spices. Families speaking a mixture of Spanish and English. Vendors making pupusas and tamales on the sidewalk. Men holding hands with their children and carrying around Snow White pinatas. There's something happy and festive about the entire thing. I could do without the crying babies, the crowds, the pushing and shoving, but I have to admit it, ethnic shopping centers feel like home.

I love Olvera Street too. Even though it's kind of become a Mexican Disneyland. I had befriended the candy vendor here, who for months sold me a super-powered citric-sour blend until one day, I returned for more and he informed me that it had been pulled from the shelves because of a lead contamination.

"I guess that's what made it so good," I told him.

"There is always a price to pay, Miss," he offered.

The company kept John Scharffenberger as a consultant and promised not to change the quality of the brand. The promise lasted as long as a Hershey’s Kiss on a summer afternoon. Soon I began noticing a marked deterioration in my beloved 82 percent bar. The texture was chalky. The cherry notes had vanished. It was becoming just another mediocre American chocolate.

IM. Today

T: What is up with all the snark?

Me: What?

T: What do you have against hardworking Spence students or hardworking celebrities?

Me: I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were a staunch defender of either of these entities.

T: Well, considering I am a Spence alum who is now a celebrity, I have strong opinions of both.

Me: Oh my God. I can't believe you were Gwyneth Paltrow all this time and you never told me. Or wait, you could also be Kerry Washington. They both went to Spence.

T: Why do you know this stuff? You've been in LA too long. I agree with you about Natalie though. She should stay home. I can't stand her. Also I can't tell her apart from Keira Knightley.

Me: EXACTLY! I say that all the time.

T: Please get the snark out of your system. I understand that the blog is your outlet for daily expression, But please leave poor Justin long alone. What has he ever done to you?

Me: Destroyed my Apple-related world.

T: if you want free products from them, you'll just have to find a way to do it yourself instead of scapegoating those who already benefit from a relationship with them

Me: No, you're right. There's no need for resentment towards Justin Long. He looks like such a vampire though. Ick.

T: There's no need for resentment towards anyone. People are allowed to eat wherever they want, Aditi. Even Chloe Sevigny. Even Adrian Grenier.

Me: Fine. You're right. Thanks for the perspective. I feel humbled.

T: That's what I'm here for.

Sigh. Disabled embedding is so unfair...

I Love this Man

Sometimes when you've had a rough week, the best way to spend a Saturday night is to make an organic heirloom tomato, basil and burata salad with aged balsamic, light a joint and watch The Botany of Desire with Michael Pollan, the documentary in which Pollan explores the consciousness of apples, tulips, potatoes and marijuana. And does it slightly gigglingly, like he's high himself. But the truth is, he's high on his sensitivity and brilliance, and his acute awareness of his connection to the Earth, and this makes you love him even more. And he does discuss tulips and apples and marijuana through their own consciousness and genuinely explores the world from their perspective. And it's sort of beautiful.

I'll admit it: I have a ginormous crush on Michael Pollan. I want a domestic partnership with him in which he grows vegetables for me and makes me dinner and answers all my questions about sustainability. In fact, this morning, I had a question about Monsanto and I was mildly devastated that there isn't some sort of Michael Pollan hotline that I can call anytime I have questions about planting my own tomatoes or what kinds of tulips to buy for the dining table. Seriously, watch The Botany of Desire. It's sort of brilliant.

Jumping the Shark

Last Saturday, 12:00 PM, Square One Dining: Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, cutting the line and getting the coveted inside corner table. Her: cute and perky. Him: gaunt and pale. It doesn't matter, I'm only filling in details. There are only a handful of tables at Square One. And a handful of loyal brunchers. B or C celebrities are fine. I don't mind Cristina Yang eating there, and no one would have noticed Justin by himself. But Drew Barrymore signals the end to pleasant Sunday brunches at my local brunch spot.

Last Wednesday, Natalie Portman at Edendale. Really Natalie? Can't you get a drink at like, Hungry Cat or something?

Friday night, 8:30 PM, Alegria: Chloe Sevigny and entourage appear wearing androgynous outfits documented by NYT less than a week ago. This was the final straw.


Dear celebrities,

No offense or anything, but when you start eating at my small neighborhood dining joints (By small I mean the kinds of places that only have like eight tables to begin with), they get overhyped and descend promptly into the shitter. I'm not saying you should stop eating or anything. And I know your dining options are limited as you have to keep your daily caloric intake under 800. Especially you, Justin. You are scarily skinny. Truthfully, I just hate you because you have the best gig on Earth and get free Apple products anytime you want them. And what have you even done to deserve that gig? Nothing! I won't get into your talent here, because that would just be mean.

But to the rest of you: I've heard there's great dining west of La Cienega. Or do as Adrian Grenier does, and park your Prius at the Silverlake Trader Joe's, buy a bunch of frozen vegan stuff and then go home and have your chef or your friends or Johnny Drama microwave it (This goes especially for you, Natalie. I know all about your dietary restrictions. I saw that episode of Top Chef).

This way, we can all be happy. You won't have to deal with people ogling you through your dinner and I can still get decent service at the places I love. It's a win-win for everybody!

Thanks!
me

pulled from friend of friend of friend's blog

From synecdoche on Flickr, an art project in Houston:

Using 13 billboards along the city´s downtown freeways, Olivier will replace the usual advertisements with images of the urban landscape that would be visible if the billboard did not exist - the sky, trees, and buildings obstructed by the ads will now be “revealed.”

Having been to the southern US, I can certainly recognise the pattern synecdoche describes in the description of another photo of a billboard from the project:

Houston is a city of billboards and big signs, sprouting everywhere above the highways in gleaming, glaring, blinking, clashing profusion. A billboardless vista is rare; in traffic-dense commuter areas there are so many that they cancel each other out, becoming visual background noise. Even on a relatively deserted stretch of highway there will be at least one or two every half-mile or so.

Sigh. Relive the Memories. Motherfucker.

Young New York is so Post -Everything

New York Times correspondents are running out of things to write about

Hi, our names are Chloe and Tara and Skyye and after we get off school from Spence at 2:30, we take off our uniforms and like, dress androgynously and take like, the 6 to Soho and then just like, stand like this outside the Thompson Hotel. Sometimes, though, Skyye's driver drives us there.

Then Chloe has therapy so we part ways before meeting up at Milk & Honey at 11. We love Sasha and his cocktails. Tara and Skyye usually share the blood orange mojito because it has sooo many calories! And also, it's tacky to be hung over in class the next morning.

Anyway, we have to go now. This conversation bores us. And we don't know why you asked why we dress this way. We don't know why, what kind of a question is that anyway? Ugh, we guess it's because we live in a post-post modern, post-post gender world. And it is sooo boring.

I miss you, Sukhy

Sukhy is my eyebrow-threading lady in Providence. Today, after a discussion of eyebrow grooming, I found myself missing her. In college, during finals, when I was walking around in glasses and an ugly too-large cardigan with my hair unwashed and pinned in 20 bobby pins, people would stop me on the green, or outside the CIT and say, "Oh my God, did you do something different? You look great." And it was the eyebrows. Because Sukhy isn't just an eyebrow-threader. She is an artist.

Once, when I lived in Atlanta, I flew home for Christmas, stayed an extra day, and drove two hours to Providence to see Sukhy. This should speak to my loyalty when I feel like I've met the right person and also my general commitment to eyebrow grooming. But more than this, it should speak to my love of Sukhy and her art. Anyway, her shop was closed and I almost cried. So to make myself feel better, I got a banana nutella crepe at the Creperie. And a falafel at East Side Pockets. And one of those extra large cookies at Meeting Street Cafe for the ride home. And went home with ungroomed eyebrows. It was a sad day.

Mad Libs

Dream: I am taking Metro North from Riverside to Grand Central, sitting next to a drunk, homeless man. We are doing Mad Libs together.

"Blanks are heavy to carry," I say.

"Balls," he mumbles, "farts."

He is actually playing the right way.

"Illusions," I say.

He nods, "Yeah, those too."

On Beauty

Someone told someone told someone about a Mary Kay lady in our neighborhood who had just lost her husband and had two daughters, one in college and one just about to start, and I think my mom felt bad, and invited her. Which was nice, like my mom, but weird, because she doesn't wear makeup. She insisted I join and when the lady walked in, she was sad and weathered, like someone who had been batted around. Like the time there was a hurricane and when we drove to the yacht club the next morning, there was Blue Moon, off her moorings and lying in the sand, on her side. She was there, still alive, but she had had a tough evening. That's just how it is sometimes. There's a storm, things and people are damaged. I don't have any first-hand knowledge about things like this, which is why I refer to boats and not people when I speak of such things.

My mother insisted I join, and it made sense. I was 13 and girls were beginning to wear makeup to school and I was resentful of my mother because she hadn't taught me how to wear mascara and eye shadow. So the sad woman did our makeup. She probably had experience doing Church plays because she pancaked stuff on and gave my mother lavender eyeshadow. Mine was green. Fuschia lipstick. Orangey rouge. After she was done, my mother purchased a handful of products we would never use. They are still sitting on her dressing table to this day. The woman left and we both walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, horrified. We looked like transvestite hookers in an Almodovar film. Then we laughed and washed off the makeup. I understand now why my mother doesn't wear makeup. I still don't.

Thanks for this, Meredith. What a lovely read.

haruki murakami: on seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful april morning

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still, #14, 1978

In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai, 2000

IM. Today.

T: I read on your blog that you cut your thumb open and I just wanted to make sure you don't have tetanus or something.

Me: thanks. I'm ok.

T: i also wasn't sure if it was a made-up story or like real. but i assumed it was real because you're a little accident prone.

Me: i know.

T: ans i was there when you did that weird interpretive dance thing in the snow i think you were doing a george w. bush impression and you slipped on ice and dislocated your knee.

Me: OMG! You remember that! that was years ago! it was even before he came into office. i was demonstrating what a retard he was.

T: I know. and then you were like a retard in a cast.

Me: i had to take the cripple shuttle to class for weeks.

T: i know. it came to the dorm. and it was hard for you to get on. even with crutches. i felt bad for you. it was in the middle of winter.

Me: you have such a good memory.

Me: can you do me a favor and forget that incident?

Me: Please?

T: no. i cherish my memories.

Me: fine.

does this ever happen to you?

you feel panicky for some reason so you decide to drink a diet coke, which seems to have an oddly calming and sedative effect on you. it makes no sense, since it's high in caffeine content, but you imagine that diet coke regulates your heart rhythms for some reason, like a liquid pacemaker that slows your heartbeat down. or something like that. and you've never really articulated this, except to your mom, who agrees with this, so you assume it's a genetic thing. anyway, so you try to open the tab but when you flip it, the can doesn't open, so you stick your thumb in and try to pry the lip open. and then you slice your thumb and then you're bleeding into your diet coke and all over your desk and it's kind of a mess. and then people around you are like, "oh my god! you're like bleeding all over the place!" and you're like "i know."

no? okay. just thought i'd ask.

Should I read The Original of Laura?

I love this man.

Nabokov’s style – his love-affair with words, both Russian and English – always teetered on the edge of mannered preciosity. In his best novels, his wit, his ingenuity, his gift for parody and his incomparable eye for human absurdity withheld him from the precipice.

-Jonathan Bate, Telegraph, UK

The rest of this review is so terrible and disparaging that it makes me want to stab Jonathan Bate. But the above line, I agree with.

Clarification

I don't deny that Beck is insanely talented. It's just that I have serious issues with pretentious poser boy-types. I feel the same way about Darren Aronofsky. It's like, okay, we get it, we know that you're clever and different and occupy a separate reality. You can take off that...tie thing now. And then they go and make something really beautiful and raw like Record Club or The Wrestler. And you realize that pretentious poser boys are just sort of sensitive and insecure and that there's often a definitive trajectory from insecure poser to really sensitive poet, it's just that it takes a while to unearth sometimes. And then you like them even more. Reluctantly, though.

Note to Self

Dinner at 10:00 on a weeknight at Umami with a group of friends induces dreams about death.

Death

A vivid dream: I am at a really big garden party. Like the commencement gala at Brown. And everyone I've ever known is there. Like the guy I gave directions to on the subway once, and my grandparents, and the freshman year roommate I was sometimes snide to. And obviously my parents, and my sister and best friends and all the men I've ever loved.

And they all seem to remember everything that ever happened. All of it. Including the moments where I was petty or jealous or uncaring. But mostly, I think I was kind. Or at least tried to be. And mostly, I tried to help. And mostly, I cared. Often vehemently.

So I woke up relatively okay with myself. Because really, when you strip things down to the essentials, this is what really matters, isn't it?

Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico "I'll Be Your Mirror" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath in Boston, 1958

Sometimes, I think about opening a pie shop. Because there is a serious dearth of good pie in LA. This weekend, shopping with R, we complained that we need to live in a fatter city. Not just for the pie, but size 0s and 2s are never on sale here. Resolution: I should open a pie shop, get fat and I'd never have to pay retail for anything ever again. Not that I ever really do. The frugal Indian in me usually prevails. I should have entered this pie contest. I have, over the years seriously perfected my pie-baking skills. There is not much else I am actually good at, aside from writing and baking pies. I don't really have any useful life skills. Occasionally, I worry about this fact and think about taking up CPR or rock climbing or something. Then I remember I did take a CPR class, ten years ago, with Jo. But we spent half the class laughing at our instructor and the other half playing MASH or hangman. I barely passed the written test. I had to copy two answers off Jo.

I've fantasized about this for years, about making a film that would just be the making-of, a fiction about a fiction. If you push the genre of the making-of a little further, you enter the terrain of voyeurism, of stealing images and stealing a particular intimacy. It enters a very secretive terrain. I've always fantasized that it would be through the making-of that you would discover some other story, the real story that is being told. That's what I pulled into this movie, that motif.

-Pedro Almodóvar

Sunset Boulevard, Edward Ruscha, 1963

Edward Ruscha and Lawrence Weiner, Hard Light, 1978

I'm not just looking for pretty flowers to paint. There is a certain flower of decadence that inspires me. And when I drive into some sort of industrial wasteland in America, with the themeparks and warehouses, there's something saying something to me. It's a mixture of those things that gives me some sense of reality and moves me along as an artist.

-Edward Ruscha, 1988 text from Esquire, titled "The Witness,"

My Love Affair With Zadie Smith Continues...

a kind of magical thinking takes over…by middle of the novel, I mean whatever page you are on when you stop being a part of your household and your family and your partner and children and food shopping and dog feeding and reading the post. I mean when there’s nothing in the world except your book. and even as your wife tells you she is sleeping with your brother, her face is a gigantic semicolon, her arms are parentheses and you are wondering whether rummage is a better verb than rifle.


What would I do without Zadie Smith? Or NPR, for that matter.

If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don’t worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act - truth is always subversive.

-Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

How is it possible that I've never come across this site before?

The Road=Uck

Me: What a total piece of shit.*

R: It was like apocalypse-porn. And an ad for Coke.

Me: EXACTLY.

*The ONE redeeming factor: Omar from The Wire played the Naked Man.

Dear Benicio del Toro,

Not all men can pull off the I-haven't-slept-in-nine-days-and-I-have-massive-dark-circles-under-my-eyes-also-I-haven't-shaved-and-also-by-the-way-I-forgot-to-mention-that-I'm severely-damaged look, but you can. It's so hot it's kind of ridiculous. Still, I need to build up an immunity to this look. Because it's caused me a lot of troubles in life.

The Lovers of the Bastille, Paris, 1957

Jeanne Moreau and Jean-Luc Bory in Louis Malle's The Lovers, 1958

Pablo Picasso and a young woman at the Riviera, 1960

i know this is really cheesy, okay?

ever since i saw the 60 minutes piece on pirating movies, i've basically thought of steven soderbergh as a serious whiney bitch-douchebag. which is unfortunate, because i really love this movie. and this song. which has nothing to do with steven soderbergh.

cheap reading

Do you ever do this? Go through an entire narrative in your head or like, an imaginary conversation with someone, or some fantasy that you wouldn't share in public, and then frown at yourself and say, "no, no, no, it's not going to be that kind of story."

Because that kind of story is the one you've already experienced before, in a bad made-for-TV movie or in a novel you picked up from the 99 cent bin at the airport. It might even be from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, but it's still pretty predictable.

Because the vast majority of narrative trajectories are predictable and therefore, lame.

And maybe it's unfair for you (by you, I mean me) to build your own/my own stories around other people and their lives. And maybe it's unfair for other people to cast you as a character in their imaginary narrative. Because that's not life. That's a mixture of projection and hyper-creativity. And I'd like to think that life is better than a 99 cent bin novel, even though sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's kind of worse than a 99 cent bin novel.

Spoiler Alert

In Kiss Me Deadly, one of the central mysteries revolves around a box, kept in a locker at the Hollywood Athletic Club, that contains radioactive material. I live a couple of miles away from the Hollywood Athletic Club. Except now it is a Moroccan restaurant run by Jeffrey Chodorow. Either way, sometimes I wish I could put all my own radioactive material, my guilt, my remorse, my pettiness, my poor judgment, and poor decisions in a box and leave it in locker at the Hollywood Athletic Club and skip away into a simpler life. Also, I would put: my desire to be wittier, my jealousy of my friend L's aesthetic sensibilities, my bad habit of falling back into predictable patterns.

IM. Today.

T: Dude, you wrote this really deep piece and I was kind of into it, and then you posted a dog in a frog outfit at the bottom.

Me: I know. it wasn't intentional. Jo and I were talking about dressing dogs in halloween costumes and whether it's cruel or cute. I vote cute.

T: it was startling. don't do that again.

Me: what, post pictures of dogs in costumes?

T: no, it's not the dog in a costume, it's the curation. keep complex thoughts and dogs in costumes in separate places.

Me: I have trouble compartmentalizing.

T: God, don't we all know it.

Thoughts

constellations, gravity, small acts of violence.

People were more apt to roam bra-less in the 80s. And in the 90s. And in Robert Altman films.

Have you negotiated your various competing identities today? I haven't.

A woman stopped me this morning and asked where I got my necklace.

"From my mother," I said.

"Where did she get it?" she asked, relentless.

"From my grandmother," I said.

"I hate you," she offered. She was one of those overly verbal/overly opinionated/overly loud types. The types I can never decide whether I like or not.

"I always look at your jewelry in the elevator," she said.

This made me feel strange. Like she was telling me that she stares at my breasts in the elevator.

In an English class once, there was a girl with perfect breasts. Not big, but perfectly proportioned. Everyone looked at them. Even just to pass time, while we were bored with the lecture.

I often feel strange, at the things people say or write. Or say. Or say in writing.

But I do nothing, just smile.

Christmas in Paris, 2004

Samuel Beckett, Le Petit Café, Boulevard St Jacque, Paris, 1985

Pastoral

When I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best of all colors.
No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.

-William Carlos Williams

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

-Marcel Proust

Marilyn Monroe, by Alan Grant

Dream

I meet my friend T at Sunset Junction and she suggests we get ice cream at a new shop that's opened there. But I am picky about my ice cream and clearly deceitful to boot because I tell her I'm not hungry, then watch her take off on a bicycle with too-large wheels, and then head to the ice cream place that I like, down the street from the one she suggested. Maybe I do this because I am also a misanthrope and sometimes need to be alone, and realize this in the midst of dates with people.

The ice cream place that I like is minimalist and has a row of different flavors, spread out on a white table. The owner is tall and severe-looking, with glasses. He insists that I do a blind taste test of all flavors before I choose one.

"Blueberry with corn flakes," I say after a taste of the first flavor.

"No, it's turkey fat with blue yarn," he tells me "but you got the blue part right."

I am wrong about every flavor so he won't let me buy the dark chocolate lemon flavor I want.

He also tells me that lemon chocolate is Alice Waters' favorite flavor so he won't sell it.

"Why not?" I ask.

"Because of that bad experience Alice and I had in Spain, at La Barca."

I remember La Barca. It is a bar where my housemates and I used to go and get margaritas and nachos before there was a shooting there and we decided to drink wine at home instead. I didn't realize it was in Spain.

"And I also can't sell ice cream because we're closing now. The heater is broken and the film crew fixing it doesn't know what they're doing. I should have listened to Robert Altman," he says, "He told me they're useless at heating and plumbing and I didn't listen."

I nod solemnly, as though I understand. There is a thumping sound underfoot, perhaps the film crew fixing the heater. A gaggle of women in bikinis sit in a hot tub off in a corner. I immediately want to leave. I think about T, how I lied to her and said I didn't want ice cream, even though I really did. Just not at the place she suggested. I also lied because I wanted to be alone and felt smothered by the presence of another. And then I did what I wanted. So maybe I'm not as empathetic and generous as I thought I was.

But now I can validate my bad feelings about myself. And now I don't have to pretend that my character isn't questionable. Because I know it is. And it feels good to be right.

In the Mood for Creepy Dioramas

Coexisting Realities

My parents are in India. Delhi or Goa. A purple cloak of haze over the LA skyline. Smog never tires of this city. It refuses to pick up, leave, find a new home. In Connecticut, there is Autumn. Orange and red and yellow leaves crunching underfoot. This is also the case in Claremont, I learned a couple of weekends ago.

When the hubcap fell off and I had to go to the Prius dealership and pay $80 for a new one, I thought about wheels. Ashoka's wheel outside the Ashoka Hotel in Delhi where my mother and my sister and I get pastries and cold coffee and sit in jute chairs and chat after a day of shopping. The wheel of life, cycles, repetition. Knocking on doors that refuse to open. The cycle of life and death, death. Endings. Beginnings.

Cycling through guilt, reliving experiences. Does something persistently torment you, haunt you? Is this because you need it to or because like a ghost, or an apparition, it refuses to leave, it has made a home in your home?

Last week there was a ghost in my home. The fire alarm kept going off on its own. No smoke, no fire. Five times it was reset. Then an old halogen lamp, broken for weeks sitting in a corner decided to turn itself on. How? I asked it. It was plugged in but it hadn't worked for weeks. Then in the middle of the night, the dryer turned on by itself. It wasn't scary, it just was.

What is it that I need to be told/reminded of? I asked this strange force. This electrical malfunction/strange energy in my house. I have tried to seal off the things that haunt me, but they persist, in perfect concentric cycles through my life. The cycles of the seasons, fall. What is it I need to harvest? What do I need to bury now?

And I worried because my dreams are no longer as vivid as they once were, telling me things that I couldn't have known on my own. Is this how all powers are lost? Is there kryptonite hidden somewhere in the shelves, in the bar, behind the bookshelf? When will I be me again? I asked, and by this, I meant, when will I be strong, or maybe even powerful? When will I be able to look at life really in the eye?

Sometimes I think we are all so old. So much older than we think we are, than we seem to be. Shouldn't we know better?

If you drive in circles in your own city, you notice strange things: a Diesel Mercedes rolls into an intersection, hits a wall, rolls back. There is no driver; it was left on a hill. Without the parking brake on. No one is hurt. A dog so tiny it can fit into the palm of your hand. a friend, running down Sunset, the comfort of familiarity.

I am flexible enough that I can bend and temporarily hold on to tiny realities. The deeper truths are too heavy to carry, at least at all times. I carry them a few feet, then take a break. Many breaks. There is some sort of equation to this, isn't there? Strength=Time+Practice/The Flexing of Certain Muscles. I am willful but not strong. There is a difference. This difference cleaves into the softer part of my flesh, maybe the underside of my arm, and sticks there. I feel the pain of this in cycles.

Can I live here, please?

thoughts that float and never quite take root

Some complex systems: nervous, digestive, hydraulic, galaxies, highways, immune, arteries, colonies, cells, solar, molecular.

On the way to work, a Mexican grocery store called "El Lechero."

At a wedding someone said this: "Do you know that the name Gavin is just vagina rearranged without an A?" Vagina rearranged without an A. Vagina rearranged without an A, I think over and over again.

Sometimes men will say something gross or crass and you'll ask where that came from.

"You've never heard that before? It's very 7th grade," they'll say, and it'll make you wonder what else you were shielded from your entire life.

My grandfather used to give me homeopathic placebo pills whenever he took his medicine. A capful of tiny sugar capsules. Now whenever I take homeopathic medication, I think I am taking a placebo. What other things in my life are upsidedown likethis? What other false assumptions/strange behaviors are guiding me from one place to another, one choice to another?

Maybe everyone thinks of themselves as a person of principle.

I miss home I miss home I miss home.

Yasmeen Ghauri, mid-90s

The harm of death goes to the heart of who we are as human beings. We are, in essence, forward-looking creatures. We create our lives prospectively. We build relationships, careers, and projects that are not solely of the moment but that have a future in our vision of them. One of the reasons Eastern philosophies have developed techniques to train us to be in the moment is that that is not our natural state. We are pulled toward the future, and see the meaning of what we do now in its light.

There is abundant chatter today about “being spiritual” but scarcely anyone believes that a person can be of troubled mind and healthy spirit. Nor can we fathom the idea that the happy wanderer, who is all smiles and has accomplished everything on his or her self-fulfillment list, is, in fact, a case of despair. But while Kierkegaard would have agreed that happiness and melancholy are mutually exclusive, he warns, “Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair...

...But the issue of spiritual health looms up with regard to the way that we relate to our emotional lives. Again, for Kierkegaard, despair is not a feeling, but an attitude, a posture towards ourselves. The man who did not become Caesar, the applicant refused by medical school, all experience profound disappointment. But the spiritual travails only begin when that chagrin consumes the awareness that we are something more than our emotions and projects.

Later I would come to believe that erotic ties were all a spell, a temporary psychosis, even a kind of violence, or at least they coexisted with these states. I noted that criminals as well as the insane tended to give off a palpable, vibrating allure, a kind of animal magnetism that kept them loved by someone. How else could they survive at all? Someone had to hide them from the authorities! Hence the necessity and prevalence of sex appeal for people who were wild and on the edge.

-Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs

Halloween

A Halloween wedding, a Jewish wedding. The bride and groom are lifted up in chairs, everyone holds hands and dances in circles. It makes you want to be Jewish, or at least incorporate this tradition into all cultures. We wear costumes. I have a thick pair of glasses and someone calls me Le Corbusier. We talk about Le Corbusier's Delhi and Chandigar. Only architects know these things. A 7-year old boy in large sunglasses and a Marge Simpson wig does a a horizontal belly-dance on the floor: an ambitious but disabled worm. Later, we try to get into the saddest looking bar in all of Claremont: Piano, Piano, next to the Doubletree. There are only four people inside, and we are a motley crew at the door, a pirate, Le Corbusier, a French man with a "moostache," a gay cowboy, a serial killer, a caped vampire with a pink wig, a milkmaid, the bride and the groom, dressed as themselves.

"We close at 2:00 AM," they tell us.

"Come, on, it's daylight savings," we tell them. And this nice couple just got married today. And the mariachi band didn't show up. Just for a drink?" We are relentless. No dice.

"You guys are douchebags," says the groom. "We're never coming back to Piano, Piano," I tell them.

"It was my cape," says the pink-haired vampire. "It was just the way they looked at it."

"They're capists," says the pirate.

We take the elevator back to a fourth floor suite at the Doubletree. There is some discussion about the transmission of oral herpes and the deftness with which the DJ incorporated Halloween songs, 80s songs, hip hop, Michael Jackson, the Zombies, Kinks, Depeche Mode.

"Michael Jackson, will his deadness ever die?" ponders the pirate.

In the suite we pass out. People smoke hash on the balcony. Pizzas are delivered. Women sit in their boyfriends' laps and negotiate the draft coming from the balcony.

We wake up the next morning in a place that reminds me of the east coast. We drive around the campus, stop and get coffee. College campuses, particularly the kinds with rolling green, they have a way of inspiring an intense desire for personal normalcy.

Brunch at Gjelina in Venice: a castmember from The Hills at the table next to us, in leopard print and large pink sunglasses. I am mesmerized with her ability to roll her gaping mouth around an abundance of words that all mean nothing. People speak of real-estate, shopping, shoes. What to do with places that offer their inhabitants no reason for complaint? A town of people who are beautiful, well-coiffed, well-dressed, they even have beautiful homes and beautiful weather. And they all look so jaded and tired with life. They reach for the next shiny thing, the way one reaches for a breadstick before dinner: thoughtlessly.

"Did you like the food?" he asks.

It wasn't the food, I think. It was the recognition that certain places are their own exposed-brick and reclaimed hardwood solipsism, almost as though even the wrought iron urban chandeliers, with different-sized light bulbs sigh in a bored and yet self-congratulatory way.

"We're here," they say. "What to do now?"