Category Archives: bookworthy
I wish we’d all been ready
My new hometown in the middle of Los Angeles looks like a scene from the apocalypse today. We’ve had our troubles with grocery store strikes; we’ve had the buses come to a halt for a mechanic’s strike.
It is extremely hot, unseasonably hot-reaching the 100s. And the Santa Ana winds, the ones Raymond Chandler blames for murders have begun to wake up.
The heat, the wind and I believe the discontent have resulted in many fires in our surprisingly brambly metropolis. One in particular is out of control.
45 miles away, where I work and breathe, white ash flecks were raining down. I walked through the grand opening of disney hall, with red carpet and velvet ropes mutely broadcasting BY INVITATION ONLY. And just in case you didn’t get it, there were cadres of police security to remind you that YOU were NOT invited.
The cloned waitstaff lined the street in a military at-ease position, their red-vested backs to us, the unininvited. The huge metallic hall, more modern than the day after tomorrow is blurred by the thick air.
The commuters walk in lines to their cars, and the cars file in lines to the freeways, which are far from free at this time of day.
Some self-employed commuters in unwashed clothing hold cardboard signs for the cars driving by: “Hungry. Homeless. Need Help. Need Food. God Bless.”
At my space in the wavy asphalt, my sedan gathered small drifts of white ash.
Full up
SOmetimes I don’t write because I don’t have anything to say.
More often, it’s because I don’t know how to say what I’ve been thinking about. Life throws a lot of experiences at me sometimes, and I have to ponder them a while before I can get a fix on them.
Impressions and thoughts and ideas.
I remember when I was living in Russia. That first year was so hard. I was tired a lot, and excited, and doing so many new things and getting used to so much. In a lot of ways, I am realizing how parallel my experiences here are to my first year in Russia. There is a lot to get used to.
This weekend, I went to the housewarming party of a new friend. There was a point in the evening that a passionate discussion about the tastes of different kinds of bottled water occurred. The relative tastiness of Arrowhead, Ralph’s brand, Aquafina, distilled vs. mineral-all were discussed.
I come from a place where many people do not have running water.
Yes, this is culture shock. I try not to be judgemental. These different types of water are all available. Why not have an opinion about them?
I remember in Russia, the only tooth cleanser was a powder. That was it. When my friend came to visit me in America, she about dropped through the floor, looking at all the different varieties of toothpaste.
I suppose that’s not so different from different varieties of water.
Back to basics has a different meaning in different places.
The best and the obscure of L.A.
So I’ve been here more than a year now. I still feel like I have no idea what’s going on. But the truth is, I ‘ve seen through a glass darkly what it is I have no idea about. I know more about what I don’t know about.
As I was walking to work today (yes, you read that right. SATURDAY. This is why I haven’t had time to explore my new city..bloody attorneys), I saw a “Best of 03” publication in the LA Weekly newpaper dispenser. I snagged it.
Thing’s the size of a phone book! Holey Moley! I’m keeping it, it is giving me all kinds of ideas of things to check out.
And it’s inspiring me to make my own list of random stuff. Here goes:
BEST HYPED PLACES IN LA THAT EVERYBODY HAS BEEN TO BUT ME:
Pink’s Hot Dogs
Canter’s Deli
The Beach (aka Surfing)
Hollywood Bowl
BEST HYPED PLACES THAT EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT BUT DOESN’T ACTUALLY GO TO, THAT I HAVE BEEN TO:
Getty Museum
Free Shakespeare in the Park
Norton Simon Museum
Central Library
The Symphony (including the new Disney Hall)
Swing Dance lessons at the Derby
Museum of Contemporary Art (Twice!)
a bus
A night class at UCLA
BEST COOL THINGS THAT EVERYBODY DOES THAT I’VE DONE TOO:
Farmer’s Market
Concerts at the Greek Theater
had an extensive conversation with a dicey used merchandise store owner about said merchandise
the Soda Pop Fountain (mulholland fountain on Los Feliz Blvd by the 5)
Bought FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY cd’s and movies from used cd stores
Bought vintage and obscure designer clothes from vintage and obscure shops
joined a book club
Celebrity sightings
done open mike performances
Had highly abstract conversations with just-met strangers about pursuing creativity and staying centered
Seen a Laker’s Game (Go Fisher!)
BEST STUFF I STILL WANT TO DO
see original live theater ( oh wait, I did that…so do it MORE)
Drive to Mexico
go to hear authors and artists talk about their stuff
Drive to Vegas
Go to a dance club on Sunset Strip
Go the the H.O.B. Gospel Breakfast
Take a Yoga class
Just for starters.
I guess I ‘ve done a lot of activities that have a hushed-voice environment…the museums, the symphony…That’s due in part to the fact that my honey likes calm, contemplative places of beauty. He doesn’t feel like doing the loud and crazy stuff. I do that with other people.
There’s a ton of stuff I still want to do here. I suspect that there is no danger of running out of kick-ass fun stuff to do in Los Angeles. One of the biggest differences between LA and everywhere else I’ve lived is the willingness of the people in LA to do stuff.
The difficulty I’ve had in trying to start a group to do almost ANYTHING…Lord…Everyone seemed to just want to talk about doing cool stuff, but not actually start it.
HERE, I meet tons of ambitious motivated people who are willing to show up and do it. Maybe this place is the place where people come to make their dreams come true. They arrive with their sleeves already rolled up.
Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is that I LOVE that about this city. You say, “Want to start a writing group?’
YES! and they do it.
“Want to work on a project with me?”
YES!
I love that kind of YES.
So I say YES to this city too. YES, let’s go do it!
Shine
Just finished the movie, and I am left really thinking about a lot of things. That’s what make s a movie good, right?
It’s about piano playing, and it’s about mental illness. Kind of both. David was supposed to be this raging genius, but right when he showed everyone that he was so extraordinary, he goes insane.
Or just gives in to his insanity, maybe.
What I can’t help thinking about though, is what Gillian was thinking. What woudl life be like married to an insane person?
Of course, insane has many levels. David’s level seemed to be mostly pleasant. But what kind of partnership would a marriage like that be? I guess there are all kinds of marriages, like there are all kinds of people. It blows my mind. I cannot imagine myself in that position.
It’s also interesting to think about what constitutes genius and what constitutes insanity. Haven’t we all been aware of the relationship between the two?
An insane person sees things differently than regular people. A genius does the same. Maybe it’s only a matter of labels.
I also wonder about the idea of classical music. I play the piano. Rather badly at this point. Technique was never anything I worried about. I just wanted to play. And I always wanted to play new things. I hated practicing. I wanted to learn to play a song, and then just PLAY.
Originality is key. Play the same song, but play it in a new way. Put a new twist on it. Practicing seemed going backwards.
But classical musicians play the same stuff over and over and over. 8 hours a day of practicing. Insane! How could you do that?
Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of reinterpretation. I think that the jazz standards can be done endlessly, and always be new.
But I will never understand the idea of playing the same thing, exactly the same as the guy before you. Maybe this is a throwback to a time before we had recording technology.
Interesting that jazz took off right after we had the ability to record stuff. Hmm….
Well, I recommend the movie.
Politics
This recall of the California Governor has us thinking about the ridiculousness of politics.
I have other reasons to think about politics:
PERSONAL politics
Things can get so scary so fast between people. Misunderstandings build up and then become an impenetrable wall.
Sometimes you can walk away.
Sometimes you can’t.
I try to go back, chase the tangled ends of the thread. What happened? What went wrong? What did _I_ do, so I don’t do it again?
HOW can I fix it?
When I was younger, I was convinced that I would be able to fix these things. That I would work HARD and FIND the problem and MAKE IT RIGHT.
As I get older, I realize that what I had formerly thought of as apathy in those around me was not quite that. To state it right out:
Sometimes, you just have to let things go, do nothing and let time ease you past.
Because that can really work sometimes! Amazing how so little effort can actually result in a big payoff.
But it doesn’t work all the time.
So I’m back to pulling on the threads of the knotty problem.
Do I leave it alone?
Or do I worry it a bit longer?
I don’t know.
What I _do_ know is that I’ve run across this problem before. And I also know that if you see a problem twice, the thing that is the same about those two problems is YOU. So what have I done to cause this problem?
was I just worrying it again?
These things make me so uncomfortable.
Since you brought it up-John Donne Rocks!
Carpe Diem and Rock and Roll!
Eric Olsen had reason to metion John Donne while talking about the Rolling Stones, the Spirit of Rock’n’Roll and Living Life fully to the end.
I am a fan of John Donne, so I thought I would take up the thread and say a little more on the subject.
Remember the Movie, Dead Poets Society? I can’t remember exactly, but the super-cool English teacher teaches the boys the meaning of Carpe Diem-Sieze the Day! He says it was the poets anthem.
It was the anthem of a certain SCHOOL of poets, not all poets. They were the Cavalier poets, or the Metaphysical poets. And that other thing that Robin Williams said, that the real reason for poetry was to woo women, was really true of these guys.
That was almost all they did. They came right AFTER SHakespeare, and were constantly writing poems to get the ladies to give it up. But it was part of their Credo, Live now! Live large!
Sounds a lot like Rock’n’Roll to me.
Check out this bit by Donne:
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind
Remind you of anyone? Dylan? Hendrix?
When John Donne is young, he pretty much devotes himself to pursuit of chasing tail. His poems are almost entirely seduction poems.
But he gets older. He passes 30. And he gets religious.
But he doesn’t leave it behind. “It” being the passionate intensity. If you ask me, and maybe it’s because I’m a jaded female who is not impressed with seduction attempts, the religious poems are much more powerful than his earlier carnal works.
Here is my favorite:
Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
The driving energy of that is just as much as a head-banging drum line or a squealing guitar riff. Rock on, John Donne!
Arranged Marriages
This collection of short stories, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, blows me away. The author is an Indian female living in my old neighborhood, the San Francisco Bay area. The stories talk about husbands, children, work, school, love and ambition. They are the most modern feminine stories I have ever read.
Maybe it’s because the idea of an arranged marriage strips away the necessary “happily-ever-after” fairy tale we have in the west, maybe because the Indian women feel the pull of family and children so strongly..I don’t know. Maybe we have heard the feminist views here in america so long that our sincere concern for children and mothers and brothers as equally important to our personal ambition feels like a guilty secret.
The emphasis on societal pressures reminds me a lot of Jane Austen. That, and the very pragmatic view of marriage. Let’s be real, kids. Marriage is very much a practical affair. Love waxes and wanes, but the solidity of married life has to remain.
I find this book affirms the real details of female life. The scariness of having children, or not having them. The struggle to evolve as a person without disrupting the lives of your loved ones. Others’ expectations of you, and your expectations for yourself.
The stories are beautiful, utterly practical, and haunting.
Can I get a witness
My new bus route is a little scarier than the old one. It starts out in a nice area (the area where I live..Imagine! me in a nice area!) but then heads off into the hinterlands of silverlake and echo park.
There are more interesting specimens of humanity on this route. Last week, there was a pungent gentleman with a huge growth on his thigh. I’m sorry, but it made me ill. I couldn’t even look at him. The thing was, though, he was yakking up a storm with the driver. Hard to ignore.
Yesterday, on the way home, the bus was really full. People were getting on and off, and sometimes people had to stand. There was a beautiful older Asian woman holding onto the rail at one point. I thought, Maybe I should stand up and let her have my seat. But then I realized that the seat next to me was empty anyway. She could sit if she wanted to.
And then she did. She sat right next to me. And she turned to me, trying very hard with all the small bit of English she could muster, asking if I knew Jesus.
I stifled a spasm of laughter, and told her yes, I did.
“Are you go to Heaven when you die?”
“I hope so,” I told her.
That was chink enough in my armor! She plunged in with her evangelical message. God Bless her, she was extremely earnest, if rather unintelligible.
Don’t you love that evangelical certitude that they are hell-proof? 100% inspected, guaranteed brimstone- and hellfire-free, just sign on the dotted line. Extra credit and jewels in your celestial crown if you can shed a tear or two.
I remember beginning those witnessing classes when I was 14. Evangelism courses at the church on weekday nights, teaching us to be brave and uninhibited about butting in on people. They had pre-fab answers for ALL the possible excuses people gave for not asking Jesus into their hearts.
Each excuse had a folded tract explaining and dismissing it. Things like, “What about all the pygmies in Africa who haven’t heard about Jesus? Are they going to hell?” Of course! and here’s a tract about it.
Most of the questions in the set of tracts were ones I’d never thought of. I was a little worried about them, for a minute or two. But then I had much bigger things to be worried about-I actually had to approach strangers and wrangle them into saying the Jesus prayer.
Years later, I would run into these “Are you going to Heaven?” roadblocks. I thought I should give them a little thrill. Ever hear of a secret shopper? The random customer that goes to the stores and checks out the customer service? I was the secret sinner!
I’d give these evangelical wannabees a line they shouldn’t be able to refuse, “So, if I wanted to become a Christian, what would I have to do?”
They would wig out. “Umm…Um…You should read this..!”
“Well, okay, but can’t you just tell me?”
“You should come to our meetings, they could explain it a lot better.”
Both these things went along with the same training I’d recieved: push out literature, and get them to come to church. But I was disappointed, why didn’t they try to move in for the kill? It was humiliating to know that I was probably as inept a missionary as they were.
I had actually realized this at the time. In the middle of trying to evangelize my hometown, I figured out that this was not the way to do it. Mostly, my efforts were rebuffed, and the very few times I managed to “lead someone to the Lord,” we would smile blissfully at one another for a moment afterwards and never see them again. “Hey it was nice to meet ya! See you in Heaven!”
It was so not fair! How did they get off so easy? I had to go to church and give up worldly things all the time. THEY just got off scot free. Happy on their merry way.
I had my doubts about that being all there was. Did it count, if you just said a prayer once, and then lived your life no different?
Besides, it seemed wrong to just walk up to strangers. Shouldn’t we be friends with people? Show them love and be involved in their lives? Why should they listen to a total stranger? We lacked credibility, I thought.
The evangelism class instructors admitted that “friendship evangelism” was the most effective kind. But that put me in a bind-I wasn’t allowed to know anybody that wasn’t a Christian.
Back to the mall with my wallet of tracts. That is, until I gave up on the whole idea as flawed. Tracts weren’t in the bible! Knocking on the doors of people’s home and staying completely uninvolved with their lives was wrong.
That still didn’t mean I was allowed to make friends with them. Because they would drag me down into their sinful ways. One bad apple makes all the rest rotten! Despite my protestations, I was defenseless before the evil lure of the world.
It’s been a while since I’ve been witenessed to. I almost thought it had gone out of style. I asked the woman on the bus where she was from.
“Korea!” she said.
“Where do you go to church?” I asked.
“Presbyterian.”
“Which presbyterian?”
It took a while for her to understand what I meant. She at last told me it was a presbyterian church on Wilshire.
After a moment more of her discussing the perils of sin and death, I tried to let her off the hook. I told her I’d known about Jesus for a long time, ever since I was a child.
“You go to church?”
“yes!” I said.
“Presbyterian or Baptist?”
I wonder why she picked those two denominations in particular? I told her Orthodox, which did not satisfy her. She gave me a japanime-looking cartoon tract which spelled out exactly what I needed to do to go to heaven. She had a selection of several languages.
I read it as she sat next to me silently. It was hard not to laugh out loud. The girl and the boy and the talking dog were pretty funny. The dog really was rooting for the boy to go to hell. And the girl wouldn’t get “involved” with the boy until he got saved.
I finished it before she got off, and I was thinking I should maybe hand it back to her. But I thought she might be offended.
She handed the bus driver another one as she got off.
Hooray! I’m a homeowner!
So, I got the keys to my new place on thursday. What a big thing huh?
It had been an exciting week. This was the week my boss hit the panic button, which means that he took me into his office for the last hour of every day to rip into me. Thursday was the worst day. He took special aim and let loose with a scattershot volley of conflicting and irrational statements about my abilities, my intelligence and my unwillingness to do work.
Just run-of-the-mill stuff for offices in tall buildings. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get to me. I spent thursday evening in tears. ALL thursday evening and part of early friday in tears.
BUT! I got my homeowner keys on thursday. And I had it all planned out: I would grab the keys and rent a Rug Doctor, and get to work on those “as-is” carpets I’d just bought.
My honey-sweet boyfriend met me at the building. He took a photo of my bleary self opening the door with my own keys for the first time. Isn’t that wonderful? Then he gave me a long extended hug as I wailed.
But I had cleaning to do! The doctor is IN.
I filled up the big red machine with soap juice and water. Chris (did I mention how sweet he is?) ran out to get some food for dinner. Me and the Doctor were going into consultation.
Fire that puppy up. Here we go. Pull and squirt, Push and suck.
Stupid Boss! How dare he talk to me that way.
VRRRRR
I don’t know what he expects from me, he wants perfection but in the next breath he admits that it’s not possible.
VRRRRshlllp
What am I going to do? I don’t have the time or the resources to stop the failures from happening, but his solution is just to give me more work!
SHLLLmmmm
I DON”T EVEN WANT TO BE THINKING ABOUT THIS! I SHOULD BE HAPPY TODAY!
RRRRRRRR
Man, I feel totally hopeless. I’m the one that has to face the users and be on the front lines when conferences fail. I am the one who is bringing attention to the problem in the hope that it can be fixed. But I’m not getting any help, I’m only getting blamed.
MMMMmmmmm
SIGH
My back hurts.
I finished most of the rug, I had blisters and a sore back, and very red eyes.
My darling man brought me a yummy McDonald’s salad, so I ate a little dinner, even though my stomach was still upset.
I had to come back the next day to finish that last little bit. Friday. I wanted to stay there that night, but I had no energy.
And i needed energy, because MOVING DAY was approaching.