Trouble is my Business

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I normally don’t like mysteries. They don’t grab me.

For a period of time, I was thinking this was a sign of my superiority, but then I realized it’s more a sign that i’m bad at finding the clues. You know? I just never catch on to whodunit.

I read books for the pleasure of the journey, and I don’t want to know where it is going to end up. That is why I don’t like formulaic books at all.

UNLESS! they are done with style. Which brings me to my point:

Raymond Chandler. Wow and wow again.

I was reading White Oleander a while back, and it starts out by talking about the Santa Ana winds. I was telling Chris about it, and he immediately said, “that’s from Raymond Chandler.”

He’d mentioned Raymond Chandler to me, telling me I should read it. So now, he dug up a paperback of short stories and I read it, once I got through White Oleander.

I loved it for so many reasons. I don’t like formulaic stories, but some formulas are so true to life. Like, some people, especially people who are bent on doing the wrong thing, are so predictable.

Like the dispirited blonde lady cop who falls in love with a con and keeps on wanting to reform him. She may be more complicated than that, but while she’s on the reform path, that’s pretty much all she is.

During moments, people can be just the one thing, not full complex people. Chandler captures that so well. People makes types of themselves, narrow themselves down. I get the idea that the stories emerge from the character’s choices, not the manipulations of the author.

And he boiled it down to such lovely sentences.

Plus, now that I live in LA and work across the block from where he lived, I find glimpses of my city in his books. He practicaly gives driving directions to crime scenes. It’s a vieled realism that’s really exciting.

What’s your name?

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You know that club of girls on the cartoon “Recess”? all of them are named “Ashley”?

That is so true! That happens all the time, when somehow a name gets mysteriously popular with EVERYONE for a year or so.

The government has a site about it. Alas, it only goes up to 1990, so those of us over the age of 13 will have to look elsewhere for our birth year.

My (nick) name Murphy does not hit the charts. My REAL name, Elizabeth, is WILDLY and enduringly popular.

No wonder I don’t use it.

But something else struck me. The most popular girls names have less incidences (girls named that name) than the most popular boys names. So, there are vastly more, like more than 10 THOUSAND more boys named the most popular boys name of the year than there are girls named the most popular girls name of the year.

The girls names are also substantially weirder. Did any of us see “Madison” becoming the rage? Suddently, it was everywhere.

But for males, Christopher, Michael and Joshua are inescapable. John has dropped off the top ten in the last decade, thank god. But not the top 20.

Anyway, I find it intriguing that males have far more name conformity than females, and their names are far more conservative, less risky. They don’t seem to get tricky or different names.

I wonder what implications this has. I wonder what it says about parents’ expectations for the roles that their male children and their female children will fill as they grow older.

I thumbed through the top 50 boys names, being struck by how vastly status quo all the names were. That is until I saw 2002 bringing in a new contender:
Angel

at number 46 in popularity.

You think that Buffy had something to do with it?

Asbestos can kill you!

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I have a new set of things to worry about as a home owner. One of them is quite pleasant:
How shall I redecorate?

My condo is not new, so I have to be careful of old-school carcinogenic building materials. Which are probably lodged in the popcorn covering that is blighting my ceiling.

I want to take it off! One of the guys at work (who also told me how to replace a toilet) told me it’s really easy: just spray it with water and scrape it off.

“But what about asbestos?” I asked.

“Psh! You don’t need to worry about that.”

But I do worry. I had to research it.

Know what I found out?

He was right!

The EPA and osha basically say that if you keep it sufficiently wet, asbestos-containing materials cannot become airborne, so they can’t be breathed in and give you asbestositis, which is basically asbestos induced lung cancer.

They don’t even say you have to wear a mask; just make sure the material is sufficiently wet.

I’m gonna have to pick the color to paint the ceiling now!

Summer’s Over

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So this is it. The first day back at work after Labor day. Most kids are in school, and it makes the rest of us remember when we WERE in school and we feel like buckling down and getting some work done.

But where did the summer go?

What did YOU do with your summer vacation?

I went to 2 free shakespeare plays, that was wonderful. I took a trip to Germany, also wonderful.
AND I went to the state fair.
The biggest thing I did this summer was buy a condo.

I guess that’s about it.
There were a lot of things that I wished I could have done.
I wish I had gone to the beach.
I wish I had hiked more.
I wish I had gone to a raucous rock concert. I did go to the symphony, but that is a different thing altogether.
I wish I had danced more. I dont’ think I danced at ALL. wow. that’s not right.

But this is not the only summer I have. I can do all those things in the fall as well. My time is pinched by earning a living, so I have to enjoy the other good things in life in between.

Maybe I”ll get down to the work of having fun this fall.

walking in the garden

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I finally visited Descanso Gardens. Chris has been bugging me to do this for a long time, maybe the entire year I’ve been here. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s just having the time and energy.

For both of us.

Today, we went at last. It was so beautiful! The Rosarium, and the Camellia forest, and the Japanese tea house with Bamboo. We saw so many flowers! There is also an audobon bird observatory, where they provide a telescope to look at birds that are far away.

We looked to see an Egret, with long black, knock-kneed legs.

There was a waterfall, in the middle of the redwoody and ferny part. Later on, we saw some extremely placid deer, who kindly let us take a lot of pictures of them. We were respectful and did not make sudden movements, but even so, they were extremely patient.

at the end of our three or four hours there, we decided to join. That way we get in free for a year. We had to pay their fee, but it is so close to where I live, that I think it will be worth my while.

We didn’t even see half of it.

Politics

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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!

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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!

Weetzie Bat

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You know how when you were young, you came up with all kinds of “in” words for things.

I remember we came up with all kinds of strange meaning for the colors of M&Ms. Green was supposed to have aphrodisiac powers. If you offered a green M&M to the young man of your dreams, and he accepted, it was a potent love spell.

I think the guys were completely unaware of this.

I knew one guy who referred to overly available women as puppies. Have no idea where that came from. It took him a long time to tell me that what he meant when he called a girl a puppy.

Weetzie Bat, by Fransceca Lia Block, takes that to an extreme. This very L.A. book is for young adults, a sort of fantasy coming-of-age story where there are special words to mean everything, and of COURSE everything works out in the end.

It was cute. I started reading it in the bookstore, and could have finished it there. But I was honest and bought the darn thing. It made the world feel very exciting and possible.

The State Fair!

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I spent the weekend at the California State fair. I love the fair! I was a little 4-Her when I was young. I had pigs, cows, rabbits and a big dog.

Not all at the same time.

But I would take my animal to the fair and put it in the show and see if I could win something. When you take your animal to the fair, you have to stay and take care of it. So I would be there all week long taking care of my crittur and seeing all the sights.

I got to see everything, since I was there all week. Because I was exhibiting, I got it free!

Fairs are pretty much as good as the community they are in make them. I thought that the state fair would be much larger than the Los Angeles County Fair, which I visited last year.

It really wasn’t, but it was pretty good. I saw a 600 pound performing pig, I learned how to milk a cow or a goat. I saw bunnies and cows. No pigs or sheep though. They were the week before.

We were all looking for the Deep Fried Twinkies, but they had vanished. My brother saw Deep Fried Oreos, though.

I settled for Funnel Cake.

The food at the fair seemed to be anything “on a stick.” There was Catfish on a stick, frozen cheesecake dipped in chocolate on a stick, chinese food on a stick.

This made us consider how you could put other kinds of food on a stick. I thought that a yarn-like skien of noodles would be good.

Then, the problem of how to make nachos on a stick was tackled: make it a thick stick, with a plunger that could be used to push up the cheese sauce onto the tortilla chips, which would be arranged around the stick like a pine tree.

Next year, we’ll need a booth.

Arranged Marriages

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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.