j.e.t.

thunder and snakes

2009-06-09T23:30:00.000-04:00

Thunder crashes like cannonfire across the corner of my building. We are in New York. It is early June and the rain pounds down. Light sparks through barely lifted windows. Sound follows the light by milliseconds. Cut to a girl pulling the covers over her head in the dark. Cut to a girl easing her foot into the shower. Then, umbrella in hand, she hesitates before the door.

Hours passing by are merely the head and shoulders dipping, rounding toward a computer screen until she’s back on her street and the man she met three weeks ago is there, only this time without his glasses on. Believe it or not, his name is Reefer, and that’s the truth.

The people in the neighborhood all have strange names and personalities that belong on a tv show. Measure, the barber, calls me “little sister” and insists he is too blessed to be stressed. Hatchet, that curmudgeonly old fruit-seller who lives on the first floor, hobbles out to the corner every day. His name means something. One day last winter this girl came home and said “hey” in the usual way, and he said, “hey yourself.” It wasn’t until I’d walked up two flights of stairs that it occurred to me that Hatchet was sitting in the hallway in his shorts with a hatchet on his lap while snow was on the ground outside.

But Reefer, first time we meet asks me if I have a boyfriend and if I want to see his snake. “I know what that means,” I said and walked on smirking. He laughed and wondered that I didn’t believe him. But then today he stops me again and introduces me to Prissilla – a small elegant snake slithering along the wrought iron railing of his brownstone. He offered me some reefer and some dinner, but I just went home. Apocryphal thunder in my ears and snakes before my eyes.

applause

2009-04-18T21:58:00.003-04:00

Today being the first truly balmy day of spring, there was hardly a spot of grass to be seen for all the people on the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. This alone was a sort of magic. But then a young bride and groom stepped out on the lawn to take a couple photos, and as they moved through the crowd people started clapping and cheering. What a roar! Even though the trees are still mostly bare, that applause could have put leaves on the branches.

cookies

2008-09-22T22:13:00.002-04:00

The problem and the beauty with New York is that it is always whatever day you will make it and never the today that exists in the newspapers.

Point in fact. About two weeks ago when it was still a summer night in the hot and sticky apple, two friends and I were walking down the street in Hells Kitchen eating chocolate chip cookies. The cookies had been purchased earlier at from the Big Booty Bakery in Chelsea and had been saved as special post-dinner treats. B had insisted that I make the trip downtown for the very purpose of experiencing these truly remarkable cookies, and being a bit of a sugar addict, I could not refuse.

Biting into their soft and buttery edges, I was sold – these were the best cookies I’d had in a long time. Maybe even better than the cookies from the Overland Café in LA. But what is more amazing than the deliciousness of the cookies themselves is the reaction they garnered from passers-by. A man with buzzed gray hair in his late 40’s walking out of a bodega nearly jumped in front of us demanding to know where we got these cookies. They were huge, their chocolate chunks still glistening. His 15 year old daughter would kill for one of these cookies. She was obsessed. But explaining that the cookies were not to be had within walking distance, the man promptly changed the subject and started telling us Bush jokes that supposedly his daughter had told him. However, as it became more and more apparent that the existence of said-daughter was highly unlikely given the content of the jokes, B cracked a few dead baby jokes and we moved on.

How bizarre to be stopped on the street because of a cookie, we remarked! Only in New York, we said.

But then, not even two blocks later, still nibbling at cookies that might as well be called “as big as your head,” we were stopped by two young African American women pushing strollers asking where we got those cookies! Explaining yet again that the cookies were from the Big Booty Bakery in Chelsea (we felt like sales people) the girls contemplated whether they might make the trek. We talked about the relative merits of the cookie compared to the distance, and one of the girls joked that if she knew me better, she’d ask for a bite. And since I figured we now knew each other as well as anybody, I broke her off a piece and we went along on our merry ways.

I went home smiling. Feeling like this city was my city and that we were one big happy family. Because in New York we live for these cookies. These walks. These experiences.

Meanwhile, out in the real world Sarah Palin was getting away with murder in the media and the stock market was teetering on the brink of a precipice that everyone blithely denied. Real people in real places lost their jobs. And I was happy about a cookie. Feeling that the cookie was all the world really needed. Oddly reassured and discomfited that sometimes the cookie is all that really matters.

Just a Perfect Day

2008-04-19T23:50:00.004-04:00

Do you know that Lou Reed song, Perfect Day? It is grand. Anthemic. It has the feeling of bright rays of sunshine running through it, and today I kept hearing it in the back of my mind.

An old boyfriend put the song on a mix cd for me when we were first dating, and although it has been a long time since I fancied that the song might have been about us, it has stuck with me as an anthem of the simplicity of sunlight and a well spent day.

Oh it's such a perfect day,
I'm glad I spent it with you.

It started out with a simple mission: to explore some of the record stores participating in the little known holiday of 'Record Store Day,' which features special concerts, in-store DJs, and sales. Since leaving Los Angeles, I have been disappointed by the lack of record stores (read: Amoeba). I've been waiting to be impressed. Of course, such missions are never as simple as they seem and M and I wandered through the throngs of Chinatown's street scene for a while before we found ourselves finally at Other Music on E. 4th Street. The small store rang with the lovely richness of vinyl and I remembered how much love wandering through the crowded aisles of music stores, assessing new titles and scavengering for the albums on the invisible list I keep in my head. In the jazz section I'm always rubbing elbows with those who probably think I should keep my filing fingers to myself. Finally, I emerge with Jorge Ben's Forca Bruta and Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet. Content. The orange plastic bag swinging at my side.

M, who always has all the brilliant plans, led us into Central Park where we were rained upon by blossoms, but with the quick change of plans made possible by mobile technology, we were soon shuttled to the Boat Basin for drinks with friends down on the Hudson River. Everything glowed in the haze of a late afternoon near the docks, and I couldn't help but feel jealous myself. It's easy to feel rich when you're overlooking yachts and sipping daiquiris.

Conversation flowed between hospitals and hipsters, boat fashions and immigration, roommates and life-mates and sing-song language... and I wonder how it is that I am so lucky. To have such fond friends. To live in a beautiful city where spring has finally arrived...

Just a perfect day,
Problems all left alone,
Weekenders on our own.
It's such fun.
Just a perfect day,
You made me forget myself.
I thought I was someone else,
Someone good.

repetition and difference

2008-03-06T23:57:00.000-05:00

Endless rows of houses extending out their modern lines and sunset colors like strips of pastel monopoly houses comprise the imaginary rendering of my neighborhood and every neighborhood in Northern California that I can envision. Rows of matching domesticity zagging across the golden rolling hills haphazardly and regardless of terrain. Driveways extending strait as sunbeams from cul-de-sacs. Dry and dusty sidewalks and a lone tennis ball hanging near the gutter from yesterday’s street hockey match. This is the image my mind has preserved of the anonymity of my childhood neighborhood. But it was not always this way.

It’s difficult to tell at what point as a child you begin to notice that some things are the same, and some things are different. You look at the oranges in a bowl on the kitchen table as you’re eating breakfast and you know that all those round things are oranges, and that their color is orange, and the towels in the upstairs bathroom are also orange, but not in the same way. Just close enough that you can call them both orange.

But there are plenty of things that are almost the same that we don’t even recognize as being the same. Objects like houses seem as though they are completely unique. Except as any ex-suburban kid from California will tell you, they’re not. One day as I was sitting in the backseat of the car and Mom and I were driving toward home, it struck me that a lot of the houses on our street were the exact same house as our house, but in different colors. How had I never seen it before? They all had the one peaked roof with the triangle windows. The front door off to the side. The massive garage doors on the front. It had never occurred to me that the reason I instinctively knew where the bathroom was in my friend’s house up the street was because it was the exact same house as my house. Her brother’s bedroom had high ceilings like mine, and her parents had a big bathroom like my parents did, except theirs was a mess and had toothpaste splattered all over the mirror and dirty clothes piled in the bathtub instead of the hamper. And their house, which was my house, had the tv in the wrong corner of the family room, and had a strange smell in the kitchen. Also, they didn’t have a dog, or a hot tub, and we did.

After this realization, I found that when entering some neighbor’s house which was the same as my house I would immediately compare its interior and its backyard to my own and find ways in which it was inferior and in no way comparable to my own home. Blue mini-blinds Mrs. Chu? Bad choice. No steps to the front door? Decidedly less grand. I was embarrassed by the idea that we lived in a track-home and that there was nothing special about our high ceilings because my best friend’s father designed custom homes, and she lived in a house that was like no other on the street.

Of course, now that my parents no longer live in California or that house, I can see the beauty of the open floor plan and note that reproducing such an ideal plan for family living was a smart and efficient thing to do, no different than the way each floor of an apartment building mirrors the one below. It’s only now that I am beginning to unravel the sullen pinwheel of monopoly houses to remember the way our street curved down a hill and toward an old oak tree that nearly divided the road.

Song of the Subway

2008-03-04T20:44:00.000-05:00

After riding the subway over the course of many many months, it is not surprising that a person will begin to develop a nuanced relationship not only to its multicolored pathways, or to the differing widths of a train’s cars, but also to its sounds. When approaching the stairway into a station, the familiar whoosh or screech tells you if a train is leaving or arriving and whether you ought to bother pushing past the couple ambling down the steps with the stroller. In that same moment, a keen ear can also detect whether the low hum of the approaching train is moving uptown or downtown, and whether one ought to risk jumping the turnstile when her metrocard just won’t register on the machine.

Yet these are relatively common skills among the average subway rider, and the sounds they are able to identify are not especially pleasant. But over the last several months I have made an eerie discovery about the sounds of the new trains they have begun to install on the 2/3 and 4/5/6 lines. Most people recognize them by their violet bench seats, but I think of them as the trains that sing the opening line of “Somewhere” from West Side Story. If you know the tune, sing the first three or four words “There’s a place…” It’s a unique melody because the first interval is a minor seventh. It’s dissonant. Foreboding. It resolves to the sixth, but the whir of the subway does not settle there.

The first time I heard it, I thought it was just a coincidence, but I began to realize that all of the new trains sing the same song. There must be a very simple mechanical reason for this, but it made me wonder if somewhere deep in the subway factory some funny little fellow with a love of this song engineered the subway to sing it just so.

How to Scat

2008-02-06T17:23:00.000-05:00

The first thing I learned about scatting is that no one can actually teach you how to do it. This is a problem for college-aged girls in a Jazz Vocal Ensemble at an institution of higher education. At the beginning of class last year, those who had never attempted to scat before asked the “how” question, and instead of receiving a set of rules, our teacher at the time, Miles, cackled, and screamed, and wailed, and told us that he was going to “shoot us” and make us “get crazy” in a faux Caribbean accent. The other girls in my ensemble stared at him. His outburst was completely unhelpful to them, but I think I understood. Scatting is just like talking… if you happened to be crazy. Week after week during vocal jazz rehearsals Miles would stand before us wailing on the microphone, and then tell us it was our turn. If someone asked a question, he would sing in response. While it was inspiring to listen to Miles’ vocal acrobatics, our own attempts at scatting were squeaks and whimpers by comparison.

This semester, the Jazz Vocal Ensemble has a new instructor, Christine, and her approach is much different. She thinks there are things one can learn about scatting, and she uses language to try to pull sounds out of us. She tells us to “open up” and “use all of our range.” She asks us to sing minor seconds. She pulls out a ‘lick’ as we are singing and asks us to repeat it as a “motif.” One of her strangest commands is that we “color” our voices or “dirty” the tone. Using her words, she gives us visual imagery to shape our sound because, unlike a pianist or trumpeter, the singer’s instrument is inside, and in its way imaginary.

For the past couple weeks, Christine has been sending us home with recordings of Chet Baker and Charlie Parker so that we can “learn” their solos with repeated listening. As we mimic their sounds and phrasing, I cannot help but think of babies mimicking their parents when learning their first words. The only difference is that with scat-singing we never really get beyond the baby talk.

Singing Praises

2008-01-22T21:56:00.000-05:00

From Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain:

"Deutsch and her collegues.... see absolute pitch, what ever its subsequent vicissitudes, as having been crucial to the origins of both speech and music. In his book The Sining Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body, Steven Mithen takes this idea further, suggesting that music and language have a common origin, and that a sort of combined protomusic-cum-protolanguage was characteristic of the Neanderthal mind. This sort of singing language of meanings, without individual words as we understand them, he calls Hmmm (for holistic-mimetic-musical-multimodal)-- and it depended, he speculates, on a conglomeration of isolated skills, including mimetic abilities and absolute pitch....

I was once told of an isolated valley somewhere in the Pacific where all the inhabitants have absolute pitch. I like to imagine that such a place is populated by an ancient tribe that has remained in the state of Mithen's Neanderthals, with a host of exquisite mimetic abilities and communicating in a proto-language as musical as it is lexical. But I suspect that the Valley of Absolute Pitch does not exist, except as a lovely, Edenic metaphor, or perhaps some sort of collective memory of a more musical past." 129-130

I suppose I do not really wish to journey back to the days of Neanderthal man, but to be able to experience absolute pitch and to converse as easily and emotively with music as with language... what a beautiful thing this must be!

black & white

2007-11-29T08:30:00.001-05:00

A few nights ago my roommate and I were having a conversation. My roommate is “Asian” and I am “White, ” and this in itself is not a very interesting fact except that the conversation somehow came back to race.

A friend of C’s – a white male who attends the same prestigious university that we do – was trying to describe an event he had gone to recently. When the subject came to who was at this event, he mentioned that there were a lot of “ethnic” people there. Ethnic? Outraged, my roommate exclaimed: “Ethnic! Who does this guy think he is?” Startled by the strangely racist terminology she asked him if he meant by ethnic, to which he answered, “You know… “ghetto”… errr… hip-hop?”

Did he mean “Black” people?

My roommate, angry at his failed attempt to smooth over the existence of a race other than white informed him that he could have just said African-American or Black or if he was really so concerned about it, he could have said “Urban.”

But wouldn’t you say that I’m urban? I replied innocently. I live in an urban area – and after all, we live in Harlem.

She smiled – good point!

I could understand her feeling of indignation at the racial guffaw of this white friend of hers – after all, she has to suffer people calling her their “panda” – but regardless of her friend’s stupid comment, I did feel a little bit sorry for him. What was probably just an instance of ignorance got written off as racist because he is a white male. This is the problem with being white in a heterogeneous society: you constantly walk on egg shells around the issue of race.

Being female, I have a little bit more leeway than white guys when it comes to talking about minorities and marginalized people, but as a white girl who is interested in African-American studies and who has always had a diverse group of friends, insider-outside language is a problem. You can laugh (carefully) when your friends make “ethnic” jokes, but you cannot make them yourself because you will be considered racist just because your skin is white.

I tried to explain to C that she shouldn’t be too hard on the guy who is probably not a racist, but just a bit ignorant, and she agreed. After all, I added, just recently I was having a conversation with a classmate of mine, who happens to be Afro-Caribbean, and as we were talking about the city of Atlanta, she mentioned that she liked it because it has a big “ethnic” community. That’s right folks – a bona fide black person used the term “ethnic” to describe other black people. And that’s another funny thing – a white person and a black person trying to talk about Atlanta. It’s like talking about two different cities. How do I look her in the face and say: yeah, there are a lot of affluent black people who live in Atlanta and there is an amazing hip-hop scene – without coming across as just a little bit racist? It’s the same reason that my brother who lives there can’t go to a hip-hop club even though he likes the music: you just can’t.

Over the last week I’ve been reading a book called “Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa,” by Antije Krog. Krog is a white journalist who writes about the Truth Finding Commission in South Africa following the horrors of Apartheid rule, and her struggle with white guilt strikes me as characteristic of how many white people in U.S. (especially educated, metropolitan ones) often feel. Even for those like Krog who never participated in the racist hate crimes, they walk the road “with their own fears and shame and guilt. And some say it; most just live it. We are so utterly sorry. We are deeply ashamed and gripped with remorse. But hear us, we are from here. We will live it right – here – with you, for you.”

Perhaps one cannot quite compare the situation of white people in South Africa with those in the U.S., but I imagine that this sentiment of guilt will not die out with the closing of the truth commission. 100 years or even 1000 years may not be enough time to heal crimes against a race. And yet, like Krog, I wish we could get past the black and white and truly “make space for ambiguity.”

green

2007-10-22T01:38:00.000-04:00

I believe in the power of people to change small things about their lives that have the potential for enormous impact.

This evening I read an article by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times that said if you want to save the planet, it doesn’t matter if you change your light bulbs or buy a hybrid car – what really matters is that you get out there and vote for leaders who embrace “green” ideals. While usually I agree with Friedman and do believe that electing the right leaders is important, I cannot fathom that he actually believes that the small changes individuals make are irrelevant. What Friedman fails to acknowledge is that these seemingly small changes made by individuals are the result of a change in consciousness. It is the recognition that our lifestyle choices affect our environment. It is an expression of ethical intent. Electing so-called green leaders is senseless if people do not care enough about their beliefs to let it affect their individual choices.

Moreover, Friedman seems to underestimate the power of trend-setters and peer pressure to change people’s actions. Personally, I don’t know that I would have had the motivation to become a vegetarian if so many of my friends had not already forged the way. Their example showed me that it was not an impossible task. They taught me of the environmental and economic reasons for vegetarianism. And I raise awareness of vegetarianism as an option each time I go out to dinner with someone. Indeed, even my most ardent meat-eating roommate has come to agree with the rational of reducing or eliminating one’s meat-intake.

In the last year I have gotten rid of my car and replaced it with public transportation. I’ve replaced my light bulbs with energy efficient ones. I’ve started buying most of my produce at local farmers markets. And I continue to not eat meat with the exception of fish on occasion. While I cannot claim to be a perfect environmental citizen, I’ve taken intentional steps as an individual to change my lifestyle, not so much because I believe that they are going to drastically change the environment, but because it is an expression of my belief in being an environmentally responsible individual. If Mr. Friedman wants people to vote green, they’re going to have to believe in it first.

Yesterday's Yesterday on Special Today

2007-10-11T23:52:00.000-04:00

Today is the way I like to begin things, because today is when most things begin. Today I got up in the morning and it was about to rain. And in today there is always all of yesterday and all of yesterday’s yesterday. All of my yesterdays and all of my parents yesterdays here today. Then again none of them. Today is the way I like to begin things because it’s always today when you start out to do anything. Today I got up and I walked to the subway station at 137th street and I took the number 1 train to work where I didn’t really feel like working at all and where the work I did do was denigrated by a tired old man who ought to go take a nap every once in a while.

In the middle of work I got up and walked to class in an oddly shaped room in a building that is not really a building, but an extension. And in this extension is where they house all the marginal studies having to do with race and gender and memory. In this class led by two people who are married but have different last names we tried to get our minds around what it means to be living in the post-memory of the Vietnam War, and I found myself telling the story I’ve told before about having two uncles. One uncle who was a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War and one who was a Conscientious Objector and had long hair. I told them how the one uncle, the one who went to fight, wrote a Conscientious Objector letter for the other. And I told them how my mother protested the war. And I told them about our family email list where the emails fly right and left and how no matter what the email is about it’s always a little bit about Vietnam.

Today in my mind were all the images and all the words of all the films I had been watching all week. All about The Fog of War and about Vietnam on tv. And then suddenly it hit me that when the one uncle – the one who fought – continuously sends out angry emails about why we should be outraged that someone would call General Petraeus, General Betray-us, and when he accuses the rest of the family over and over again of not supporting the troops, this is really about his feelings that we have not supported him. His family did not support him and the war he risked his life in.

Despite the startling realization this week that I actually knew very little of what the Vietnam War was about and why we were fighting it, it permeates my everyday life and my relationship with my family in very real and sometimes emotionally-trying ways. So, today I get up and go to work and I go to class and I get drenched by the cold October rain and I think about Vietnam and realize that I think about Vietnam every day in real ways as I stand in the shower and try to breathe out the frustration that I’ll never be understood by one of my uncles and that trying to talk to him about anything that matters is fruitless and that I should just settle for pictures of his grandkids.

I should settle for the pictures of the grandkids and hope that by the time they’re old enough to really realize what’s going on in the world around them that the country they live in will have put an end to petty wars that bring up all the other wars in which people who are still living have fought. Because truly, it’s not fair to anyone and we ought to know better by now.

flesh wound

2007-08-13T23:55:00.000-04:00

Apparently a gunshot rang out, but I was not around to hear it. Instead I came home to police tape all the way around the corner of the building. At least 5 police cars. An emergency police armored vehicle, an investigator in a broad-shouldered gray blazer and a woman in a pink mumu half shrieking at me that a person on the first floor of our building was shot in the face.

It was a Sunday afternoon.

They let me in through the front door ("do you live here?") and warily I walked into the building whose air seemed too exposed to sunlight. Strange. Hollow. And exposed. "There's no reason to worry." The investigator said to no one in particular as I walked past in disbelief. "A contained incident." But was it? A man walks right out the side door that I walk out each and every day and gets shot in the face in broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon... He's going to "make it" they say. They haven't caught the shooter, and earlier that day I'm approached by the same strange anorexic girl I encountered a few days previous. A white woman about my age claiming, demurely, that she is a model thrown out by her boyfriend and she needs money for a cab to an audition. All of this here in my neighborhood where I'm never panhandled by anyone, black white male female or otherwise.

Even though I know there is nothing I can do about the situation and that worrying does not help the matter, I've spent most of the day in silent dread of walking through that side door, and my only small comfort is that the police and investigators have remained here all day. I imagine the many ways a bullet might graze a man's face such that he would still live. His flesh hanging off his face like raw meat. The meat-like nature of my own leg that would incite a dog to lunge out and bite it. The decay that a bruise conveys on that same leg - and on the peach I ate at lunch in Riverside Park.

Tomorrow is my 25th birthday and I wonder half-heartedly if this means that I am getting old. I look at my face in the mirror and wonder what it will look like when I am old, just as I used to wonder as a girl what I would look like as a teenager... knowing that at least my eyes will stay familiar to me if nothing else does.

A Typical Day In Harlem

2007-04-29T20:28:00.000-04:00

As I'm walking up Broadway with my ice cream cone, enjoying the blossoms and the tulips and my new shoes...

Man on the street: "Hey mama! That ice cream sure looks good! Can I taste?"

Me: "I'm not your mama."

Man: "Well, you could be."

On Religion

2007-04-22T10:50:00.000-04:00

Although I usually detest seeing theater by myself, out of a sense of duty to a fellow producer, I went to see a play – or rather, a theater essay – called On Religion. I’ll admit that was immediately wooed by the notion of a “theater essay,” being particularly fond of the essay form in general, and I wondered how a play would perform such a thing. I was reminded of the traveling religious plays that were popular during the middle-ages and Renaissance. These plays were meant to both instruct and inspire religious feeling, and as I understand, they were quite entertaining. So, if we think about the play as a modern re-imagining of something like the passion play, On Religion did not disappoint.

I could tell you about the basic plot, I suppose, but plot takes a secondary role here. There are four players: a mother who is professor and a naturalist (not an atheist, she says), a father whom we can only call a post-modernist and a secular jew, a son who has decided that he is Christian and wants to become a priest (but whom I’d prefer to call a pragmatist), and a young woman who is going to have his child but has not agreed to marry him. The son dies, or has died. The mother grieves and does not grieve. But mostly, they talk around the kitchen table or conversely lecture and preach from the same podium. And by setting the audience on all four sides of the stage, one immediately feels as though she has pulled a chair up to the table. And in this way, it does engage you on that personal, intimate level of discussion like an essay does, slipping you in and out of different perspectives. Here we are. All together. Having a discussion on religion.

While pragmatism has certainly been on my mind a lot these days, I felt its presence most intensely in this “essay,” which is rightfully a piece of criticism that is also a performance. Although I initially felt most at home with the professor-mother’s arguments against religion and its divisiveness, I very soon understood how her son could react against his mother’s radical empiricism in favor of something else – especially when he sides with the atheists and makes the argument that there is no such “thing” as God, because God is not a thing… and also when he makes the very Rorty-esque argument that religions are like languages. We would never say that one language is more right than another language – they just offer different and unique ways to say the same thing. The son (Tom) is a pluralist. To him, religions are merely languages. In a turn that reminded me very much of William James, religions have value in that individual people are able to make use of them.

Indeed, in a modern world where “love” is deified and embraced, how can we deny religious feeling? Or are both defunct and empty – is kindness (an action, and not a feeling) the only thing we can count on? The play unfolds these questions subtly over the course of 2 hours, and I cannot get them off my brain… Not because they are fundamentally new questions, or ones I have not heard before, but because the way the play asked them without forcing answers. Leading the audience through the thought process of them, suggestively. I would compare the play toI Heart Huckabees, except that I feel like that might be an insult. Huckabees does an admirable job of leading the viewer through a series of existential exercises, but in the end forces an answer that feels like a non answer. It’s jokey and ironic and almost trivializes the investigation you’ve just been through. But On Religion does not do that.

Likewise, it does not take itself so seriously that one spends two hours contemplating the hopelessness of asking such questions. The father, for example, whose experience taking ecstasy is about the closest he has come to a religious experience, has a post-modernist sensibility that everything is ok as long as it makes you happy. And even the mother, superbly played by ex-punk rocker Marguerite Van Cook, conjures up a few blissful moments of neurotic hilarity. And in this sense, the secondary “family drama” allows for the play to act like a play instead of series of lectures and debates, which it more or less is.

And now, as is usual when I try to write about a piece of art that has moved me, I find that there is no replacement for having experienced it first-hand. Reminding me, as they play did, that cultural criticism is perhaps most effective when performed and not written in the dry tomes of a blogger/critic.

an earth day thought

2007-04-18T23:00:00.000-04:00

I don't really drink soda all that often, and when I do I rarely pay attention to that strange almost undetectable scribble on the top of the can where it tells you the CRV value in particular states. For a moment, I was bitter thinking that this can is worth twice as much in California as it is in New York, until I realized that I could not remember the last time I took anything to the recycling center, if I'd ever done such a thing at all.

And then I remembered the recycling machines that used to be out in front of the PW Supermarket near my house in San Jose. I had completely forgotten them, but suddenly I could hear that distinctive, shimmering noise the machines made as they shredded cans and 2 liter bottles. I could hear the change pile up in the coin return, and my mom taking us for ice cream afterwards. In this memory, it is always summer. Blindingly summer.

As a kid, I felt very strongly about the importance of recycling and wrote poems about how we needed to save the earth. I also felt very strongly that things such as leprechauns and fairies were in danger of becoming extinct, but now I can't remember if their extinction was a product of our destruction of the earth, or my own growing awareness that they might never have existed in the first place. But that's another story.

I wonder now who is getting the money from my cans when I stick them in the recycling bag down in the basement, and I think of all the ice cream these cans could buy if only I could shred them in those machines out in front of PW. If those machines were still there...

Anxiety

2007-04-15T23:15:00.000-04:00

Anxiety is one of those things I never will quite comprehend. It comes upon one suddenly. It grabs you and it pulls you down toward the center of your body. Toward your beating heart and suddenly you can hear your breathing in your ears. The blood courses through your veins with impatient vibration (I can feel it in the balls of my feet). It hums. And today I felt it as the phone rang and rang and rang at my parents house in Atlanta. No one picked up. Not even the answering machine. And when my mother picked up her cell phone, it was "hi sweetie... oh well... i'm in the hospital..." long pause "oh well, you know, i thought i was having a heart attack, but i didn't want to call and worry you because everything's alright... we don't really know. i think it was just a bad panic attack, that's all..."

But now what's making my heart beat in my ears is a sort of dread that I'm not being told the whole story. She sounds too cheerful like the time my parents told me weeks after the fact that our dog had died. They didn't want to spoil my vacation, they had said. But it was dreadful being left out that way. And I remember how I could feel the inside of my skull tingling as though it were hollowed out when they told me.

After we said our goodbyes I tried to go on with my day, but it's so cold outside and the rain makes it so dreadfully dark. A thousand terrible possibilties flooded my brain. I just wanted to be near someone and there was no one to be near to. My apartment empty and filled with the dull light of a lamp half burnt out. T asked me recently if I ever get lonely here, and I do. But today was unbearable, and all it did was rain and rain.

Everything is Complicated

2007-04-11T09:50:00.000-04:00

At least, that's the name of the song by my good friend Scott Alexander. If you didn't see my cameo performance with Scott at the Sidewalk Cafe back in March, you can check us out on YouTube or at Scott's new website: http://www.scottalexandermusic.com/

The Coincidence

2007-04-09T22:59:00.000-04:00

I cannot think of anything that I love more than a good coincidence. There’s something about the chance occurrence or accidental personal connection that fills me with immeasurable joy and the sense that all is right with the universe. I want to believe in coincidences more than I want to believe in reason or logic, because I think there is a part of me that believes that the random is more precise and more perfect than anything I could pre-divine.

These coincidences usually occur only when circumstances don’t seem to be going my way. Two weeks ago I stood outside the doors of a small club where my friend was already inside and the music was already playing and I was told that there was no chance that I would get in. Instead, five minutes later I followed Natalie Portman inside. Then, as I shimmied my way into the unfortunate corner where T was standing, and sipped my beer and swayed ever so gently to this girl-trio’s subtle melodies, I realized that I was watching Nora Jones since back up vocals for a singer-songwriter I had never even heard of before this night. A beautiful young woman named Sasha Dobson, who wore a gold bird around her neck, and a guitar over her shoulder.

This would have been enough. A night of almost-perfect music that I wasn’t planning on and almost didn’t see. And two celebrity sightings. But the next day as I googled this girl, Sasha Dobson, in hopes of prolonging those melodies in my ears, I learned that she grew up in Santa Cruz and is the daughter of Smith Dobson – the man who taught my brother jazz piano lessons as a child, and just a few years ago was killed in a terrible car crash. I spent at least one afternoon drinking tea in their living room with her mom and mine. This musician who I almost didn’t see play with Norah Jones in New York!

This discovery kept me mesmerized for days. I couldn’t help telling everyone I ran into, even though I knew that scenario could hardly be as entertaining to anyone but me. It was exasperating. I told it too fast. And people said: “That’s great Jess.” It’s an empty, if considerate response. After all, it’s my coincidence and not theirs.

All I can say, I guess, is that you ought to listen to Sasha Dobson, even if not by chance

how you know it's here

2006-09-26T00:05:00.000-04:00

For the last week or so I've been starting to wonder about fall. How do you know when it's here? I've been told that I've never really experienced a real fall before, and I've been told that it's going to happen soon. It will be Autumn in New York, just like the song, and the air will ring cool and bright like little bells. I keep looking for little clues everywhere, and then I'm never sure. There were pumpkins in the market last time I checked. Candycorn blazes gold, orange, and white in my hands. Tiny fangs when I want them. But these things might just be incidental. They have these things in California and that's how I would know that it was fall... they're heralds of an invisible change.

But tonight for the first time I heard it, walking up 145th with my plastic drugstore bags. The leaves on the sycamore trees are still green, but at night when the breeze blows through them you can hear their brittle melodies. Pffffffffffffffff tc tc tc tc tc tc..... Shhh-c-c-c-c-c-c-shhhhh...

And that's how you know it's here.

hot sand in the wound

2006-06-18T21:52:00.000-04:00

I’m lightly dusted in dried salt water and I don’t want to wash it off. My clammy hair sticks to my head and I want it to stay that way. At least for a little while longer. I want to bring back all that was today and all that was yesterday and to hold it for an instant. And when I feel the wound, I want to rub hot sand in it.

There is nothing better than this moment. We live in paradise, I murmur to myself. Lauren and Arun can hear me. We hold our feet up out of the water, laughing, and let the waves rush toward us. Over us. It’s easier to stay in the water than to get out of it. As I let myself edge back to shore I am dashed upon the rocks, sucked under, and then dashed upon the rocks again. It’s easier to stay in the water. Arun comes out to me and offers his hands. His feet are already cut by the rocks, so he walks out on the rocks again. Try rubbing hot sand in the wound – that will make it better, he says. It’s true. It’s rubbing the sand out of the wound that is the problem. It’s easier to stay in the water than to get out of it.

Blind Date

2006-06-13T02:28:00.000-04:00

So I’ve been thinking (which I tend to do when I’ve had a lot of caffeine), and I’ve decided: never again. No more blind dates. Before I even opened the door, I could see his balding head through the window, and when he turned around it wasn’t much better. 31. works in finance. balding. belly. white Volvo. And as I write these words I realize that this is superficial of me. Unkind, even. He is a nice… man… and I am sure that he could be a choice candidate for some… woman… of a certain age. Of course, age has nothing to do with it. I know people in their 30’s who are nothing like him, who are a whole lot more like me, and for whom age is more of a state of mind. And he has let himself age.

I suppose I should preface this by informing you that I was set up by my boss, who hardly knew me when she made the match. The awkwardness of this situation need not be mentioned. She’s my boss. She meant this as a compliment. It is not as though I have a boyfriend or some other excuse to keep me from dating “nice men.” So I acquiesced.

Yet the whole time I was out with this “nice man” all I could think of was: is this the kind of person she thinks I go for? is this the kind of person that she thinks would be right for me? is this the kind of person I am supposed to be dating? because if this is the kind of person I ought to be looking for, forget it. it’s not worth it.

And as I mused over these questions, I was reminded why I don’t date.

As we pulled up in front of my house at the end of the evening, he started to unbuckle his seat belt and edge toward my seat (his hand sliding behind the head rest), but soon enough I’d popped out the door, waved, thanked him for dinner, and mumbled something about having a nice time. It was a blatant escape – and one I hope he understood.

The next day at work when my boss asked me how it went, I told her politely that I think we are in “very different places in our lives,” which roughly translates to, “he’s too old for me what were you thinking?” But I could never have said that and wouldn’t have wanted to.

People always say that even a bad date is good because you get practice and learn what you like and dislike… but I only have so many days left in Los Angeles, and in the end, I’d much rather spend time with a friend.

One week to the next

2006-05-18T02:24:00.000-04:00

How did this happen? In precisely one week I will be in New York, and suddenly everything is scattered all over the floor again, ready to be blown away by the slightest whimsical breeze. A bin full of magazines. Clean laundry half folded. In three weeks I have gone from dashing down Olympic on foot to a terrifying temp job, to sleeping-in and wandering into a familiar office where there are always dogs and music, to laying awake at night wondering how I am ever going to make a decision about school when three weeks ago it wasn’t even a prospect.

Every little thing in my house weighs down upon me. How will I move it? Where will it go? And if I can’t take it with me, how will I get rid of it? How can I get rid of it? Books. Boxes of letters and postcards. Gifts from ex-boyfriends. A tennis racquet I’ve hardly used and a Casio keyboard with one broken key. A dozen pictures in frames. Maybe I just get rid of the frames.

And somehow, as all these things are blowing around me, I know that it does little good to even think about “things” when it is unlikely that my current circumstances will bear any resemblance to my situation three months from now. In the meantime, I think I will throw away my cd cases, and maybe the picture frames too. And if anyone wants a bookcase come August, let me know… but don’t expect my answer not to change.

Here Fishy Fishy

2006-04-14T15:38:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, my boss calls me in to her office. No. Half yells, half whines at me to come into her office is more like it.

"Here," she says, handing me a small green net attached to a stick and glancing toward her large bulbous fish tank. I know this cannot be good.

"A few of the fish have died," she stated matter-of-factly. "I need you to scoop them out and I'll hold the bag."
I looked at her with a tight-lipped bemused smile on my face. Surely she was kidding. But then she jostled the bag a bit and I realized she was definitely not joking.

"Um. Ok." I replied rolling up the sleeve of my sweater. It was a deep tank, the fish were lodged in the rocks at the bottom, and my little green stick only reached so far, so I plunged my arm into the bowl.

As I scraped the net among the rocks to dislodge the fish, it began to disintegrate into mushy fishy blobs. Oh god, oh god, oh god... Swishing the net around - grasping at the floating fish bits - I had to turn my face away from the bowl. It was too horrifying. I slapped the net against the plastic bag to try to free what remained of that sad little fish. She laughed. No... she cackled.

"Ok," She said, "There are two more..."

And this is what I am being paid for.

ha ha

2006-04-11T01:37:00.000-04:00

In response to yet another disappointing exchange with the mouse (while on the phone and pumping gas at Arco)...

Mom: Well, you never know. Miracles happen.

Me: I don't believe in miracles. I just believe in hard work that leads to nothing. It's meaningless.

Guy in a suit who is standing behind me: (laughs)

Small Victories

2006-03-25T15:22:00.000-05:00

Homeless and Unemployed. Just last week this title seemed an inevitable one, and it is not the sort of title a UCLA grad expects herself to be facing. Yet, there I was – staring at an eviction notice with one hand on my hip and the other in an empty pocket. When “homeless and unemployed” is staring you in the face, even the smallest victories don’t seem so small. Sunshine on Thursday seemed like a sign from the gods.

I’d become terrified of things like the mail and the telephone. The mail brought eviction, rejection letters from graduate schools, and have you seen me? notices. The phone rang with news that the job I had been offered at Disney was being held captive because of ridiculous employment restrictions surrounding my internship. And the thing is, I can handle the uncertainties of the job search. I can even handle rejection letters from graduate schools. What I can’t handle is having things stolen from me which are rightfully mine! Things that I like and enjoy and appreciate. Things like my house and my job.

But Thursday, the sun came out (small victory No. 1). Inspired by the sun, I went to the Farmer’s Market where a nice florist gave me and Lauren pretty pink roses just because we looked cute eating our crepes cross-legged on the sidewalk. Then, I managed to secure a temp position for at least a month, finally got through to Disney’s gatekeepers (i.e. HR), and best of all, I got word from our landlord that he would be able to extend our lease until August 1st! The Bentley House has been saved!

I suppose next week, the mailman could bring more rejection letters, and the phone could ring of no luck at Disney… but I’ll keep my fists up in front of my face. I’m ready to swing back.

The Georgia Journals

2006-03-04T22:45:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Georgia. Land of the free, home of the endlessly entertaining/slightly disturbing kitch. I've been here in the red state for about a week visiting my family as I bide my time "between jobs," and I have to say, Georgia is every bit as strange and delightful as I could have hoped. In an attempt to convince me that Georgia is cool, my brother decided we should head to Athens to check out the record stores and cool shops. Along the way, I was truly blown away by the above image - the American flag fluttering above a truck dealership... and in the background, a billboard simply stating "Jesus." God-themed billboards seem the thing here. One of my favorites: "Don't make me come down there -- God."

Since it was just Mom and me during the week, we used the time to explore down-town Atlanta. We went to a mall that was very much like the Beverly Center, visited the High Museum of Art (which has a great collection of American 19th & 20th century art), and puttered around Little 5 Points - a sort of Melrose cum Haight-Ashbury with all the requisite thrift shops and indie coffee houses. By accident, we wandered into a "feminist" book store run by a stern young woman with short buzzed hair.

We're the only ones in this tiny bookstore and I know the girl at the counter can hear us.
"... hey did you see that they have that book Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. She goes and visits all these sites associated with presidential assassinations," I say to break the silence.
And as the words still hung in the air, I turned around and the short-haired woman was holding the book. Very eerie.
"Here's the book you were just talking about. It's a bestseller right now." She shoves the book in my hands. We very quickly paid the book and were on our merry way.

The book purchase proved to be the perfect companion for our two day trip to Savannah, where we would wander amongst the old colonial squares and live oaks swagged in Spanish moss. Vowell perfectly captures the strange nuances of historical tourism and somehow makes presidential death funny. She's the kind of writer who makes you feel smarter - who makes you feel like part of her freakish vacation. It was precisely the kind of vacation I needed from my own vacation.

On Tybee Beach (near Savannah), I discovered confederate boogie boarding. Wow. Savannah is also a great place to taste all those Southern culinary delights you always dreamed of. Things like black eyed peas, collard greens, macaroni & cheese, and buttered green beans... Needless to say, Georgia is a hard place to be a vegetarian, as even the vegetables are cooked with meat. I've tried my best. And of course, a trip with Mom would not have been complete without a visit to a graveyard.

My southern trip may soon be coming to a close, but at least tomorrow we have Waffle House to look forward to.

Things that are awesome about Georgia:
- Sweet Tea
- Ho-cakes
- Dudes wearing overalls

The Stomach Flu and Me

2006-02-10T03:40:00.000-05:00

On Monday morning, I awoke to a war zone. It all began when army tribes of paranoid parasites (with isolationist tendencies) invaded my stomach and swiftly began evicting all occupants of its newly claimed territory. Out the front door, out the back door – take your pick. As evidence of their paranoia, they even launched a full-scale evacuation when there was nothing left to evacuate – leaving me lying on a cold linoleum floor and wondering how I had not foreseen their terrorist plots.

Diplomatic measures were futile. Offerings of peace (tomato soup and saltine crakers) were flat out rejected and eschewed violently. In a panic, the body quickly shut down and meekly told me, “We’re giving up. The stomacher tribes have taken all of our major ports, incapacitated our energy supplies, defeated our strongest defenses… It’s just too much for a body to handle!”

“Well, that’s not good enough,” I said to the body. “Think of something else!”

I was angry. To think that the body was so easily cowered by one tiny tribe! The body seemed annoyed, but agreed with the stipulation that I would not do anything to irritate the colonizing tribe.

So I did not eat. I did not move.

I could hear the rumbling murmurs of the stomacher tribes, who were obviously unnerved by the sudden quiet. As night began to fall, however, the body unleashed its new defenses, and the weather began to change. As temperatures rose, all organs had been told to hold their positions. But the brain refused to comply.

In the darkened depths of my room, torn between sleep and awake, I was led into a hellish blaze of hallucination where I was commanded by invisible forces to reconstruct a seemingly un-constructible red Lego castle that lay in pieces at my feet. Surrounded by flames, I struggled to fit the pieces together, but there was no end in site. The castle could not be put together. Oh, what phantasmagorical night visions!

As dawn approached, and temperatures cooled slightly, I was withdrawn from the flames. All seemed silent. Had the invading tribes deserted? Were they killed by the heat? There was no response. For many hours, the body and I sat silently in a dull yellow haze – numb, uneasy, and empty.

But then, the rumbling murmuring returned, and in a sudden blaze of inspiration, the body turned its furnaces full throttle. War had begun again.

Why is this happening to me? I cried weakly. No body answered and nobody cared.

At the moment when I thought all was lost and that I would be forced to stay home from work a third day, and worst of all, have to seek a doctor (who could scarcely understand my difficulties, I am sure)… a thick, tropical rain came. Only, it wasn’t the kind of rain I expected. And the body laughed.

“We only thought they had usurped all ports. But we had forgotten that they could be forced out of the millions of tiny pores of your skin!”

I looked down at my shiny arm, searching for the stomachers in retreat, but I could not see them.
“No,” the body said, “You cannot see them – and with any luck, you never will."

Murakami

2006-01-25T03:03:00.000-05:00

I feel like bowing down at the altar of Haruki Murakami. I find myself singing his name – a soft chant, a wind. This weekend I finished reading his novel, Norwegian Wood, with the same kind of satisfaction that I’ve only experienced when I feel like someone truly understands what I am saying. The kind of feeling that makes me want to stand up (fist in air) and say Yes!

The story is nothing so new, I suppose. It is about a young man in love. It’s about love surrounded by death. It takes place in Tokyo during the 60’s and uses the music of the Beatles as nice little focal points of emotion (hence, Norwegian Wood). But it is not a story about the Beatles, or even about a young man who loves the Beatles, but about the way that a life can resonate with the very music itself.

Compared to The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, which is perhaps a more brilliant book, Norwegian Wood is a relatively normal story with relatively normal characters, except that a few of them reside in a glorified mental institution cum commune. Time progresses in a mostly linear fashion, I suppose, but when I was reading the book I was too enveloped in its somber intensity to be too concerned about how one moment would flow to the next. And here I am being vague again. Loving the book without really knowing why. Bowing down at the altar and whispering the name of the author to myself.

When I think about my own experiences at the university and in this past year since graduation, I cannot but help hearing their echo in the world of Toru Watanabe. The ridiculous roommates… the bizarre, earnest conversations… the attempts to be close to people and realizing that you can only get so close. And yet it is more than that. I’ll tell you what – read some Haruki Murakami and then we’ll talk.

The Best Part

2006-01-17T22:47:00.000-05:00

I have to agree with Lauren – although we had talked about staying a weekend in Grass Valley and going skiing at Tahoe, I didn’t actually think it would ever happen. But it did. I could say that sailing down the mountains with a serene blue sky over head and a silvery lake below was the best part, but it wasn’t. That sort of thing never is. The best part was nearly being blown off the top of the mountain in blizzard like conditions and saying, quite seriously, that there was no way we were going to make it down alive. The best part was singing ‘Ring of Fire’ with Lauren in our twangiest voices while on the chairlift – and later watching Lauren sail head first into a giant snow bank a la America’s Funniest Home Videos. The best part was being told to stand aside by the paramedics as they brought someone down the mountain in a stretcher… then realizing that the person in the stretcher was Theresa! Theresa looked up and waved and asked me to take her picture, but I was in too much shock. Good God! We’ve killed Theresa, I had thought. But we hadn’t. The powder was perfect and the skiing quite lovely, but honestly, laughing with the roommates on the drive back down the mountain was… the best part.

Resolutions

2006-01-12T01:01:00.000-05:00

Last week at work a nice young man (with quite nice hair) stopped by my desk to wish me a Happy New Year and asked if I had any New Year’s Resolutions – I realized that I did not. Not that I usually sit down and write resolutions, but on the first day of January I will often lay in bed, feeling pretty glazed, and make a few mental notes to myself, such as: Do not get hung-over again, go to the gym, be kinder to people, write more and talk less. There are variations on these resolutions (e.g. be healthier, instead of go to the gym, and stop incessantly teasing x person, instead of be kinder, etc.) – but inevitably they are always the same.

Perform a quick survey and you will find that most people’s New Year’s Resolutions are not much different than mine. They are all the same little cupcakes, but with different colored frosting – and most of them are just attempts to redress the wrongs one has committed over the holidays. They have nothing to do with the year as a whole. In fact, they are hardly resolutions at all because you almost never keep them. For example, on December 24th you ate an army of Gingerbread men – resolution: cut back on sweets and get in shape. On December 25th you called your 6 year old cousin Jimmy an asshole in front of the entire family – resolution: be kinder to people.

So how do I get out of this vicious cycle and make some resolutions that really count? (I ask myself as I spout off the same old resolutions to the nicely coiffed young man). One solution is to not make any resolutions at all. That way there is none of the usual disappointment when you realize that you have to make the same resolutions that you made last year. But then again, perhaps the key to making really good resolutions is to make them very specific so that at some point or other during the year I can check them off with a fat, black sharpie. I realize that we’re getting close to mid-January and it’s really too late to be making Resolutions, but I think I’ll try any way.

1. Go to the gym (did not specify how often. went last night. that definitely counts. check!)
2. Go skiing (will be able to check this one off this weekend – score!)
3. When I find myself unemployed on February 3rd do not go apply for a job at Cost Plus (might fail at this one, but if they were all easy, there would be no point.)
4. Write more hand-written letters to the following people: Tracy, Katy, and any person who requests more hand written letters.
5. Give someone a compliment tomorrow that is not related to his or her appearance (what do you think of: Your aura feels really good today! Or, just: You’re nice! hm?)
6. Do not trust other people’s taste in music. I do not care what any of you say, I will never like Abba.
7. Make 2 significant life-style changes that will reduce my use of energy and dependency on foreign oil. Possible option – less blogging. Uses both electricity and finger power. Potentially wasteful and terrorist-supporting activity.
8. Start the Bentley House Society of Unscholarly Activity. Interested? Applications are now being accepted. Weekly meetings will commence in the next few weeks. (Warning: actual formation of this society may be usurped by duties required by All Talk, No Action).

Sunday Nights

2005-11-21T03:00:00.000-05:00

Every Sunday night is the same. After watching Grey's Anatomy with the roommates, I turn off the television and say these 8 words:
"I don't want to go to work tomorrow!"
It's my mantra and I'm sticking to it.

R.I.P. dear house

2005-11-04T01:31:00.000-05:00

Today my parents sold our house and I feel like they have sold my childhood and all my beautiful family memories. I realize that this is a completely absurd way of looking at the situation, but there you have it. It feels like a family member has died and I cannot get beyond this irrational sense of… (dare I say it) betrayal.

We moved into the house on Raich Drive when I was about a year and a half old and I have no memories prior to the ones I have in that house. If you haven’t spent your entire life in one house, I guess you wouldn’t understand, but the prospect of never having another Christmas or another big family gathering at that house is almost too much to bear because I have spent every single Christmas in that house except one.

I buried my hamster underneath the redwood trees in the Japanese garden. There were sleep-overs in the playhouse that my dad designed and built for me, and I gave myself a black eye (and a scar) swimming in our pool one hot summer night. I pricked my fingers picking roses in our rose garden. My dad and I made applesauce in our kitchen with the apples that grew on the trees out back.

There are so many things that my parents will leave behind – things they build with their own two hands. My dad designed and built the gazebo and all the layered decks. He painted our house by hand. Together my parents built a garden that could easily be in a magazine – if you’ve ever been to my house, you know that it’s true. When I envisioned a room with spring green walls, my mom painted them. She put beautiful things everywhere and made everything warm and wonderful.

I tap danced and learned to sew in our garage. I learned my lines and practiced my Mock Trial speeches in the blue-bathroom shower. I used to think the guest bedroom was haunted. In the summer the attic fan outside my bedroom roared and lulled me to sleep. When I could not sleep my best friend Lauren and I would lay in my bed talking about silly and fantastic dreams. At one point, we tore out the carpeting in the family room, and my brother and I rollerbladed on the bare concrete. We played basketball in the driveway, although neither of us is any good at it. We slid down the stairs on the hardwood floors after Aurelio came to wax them. On Christmas mornings, Sean would climb in my bed and we would lie in bed guessing what presents were under the tree until the morning light turned wintery orange, and it was late enough to wake up my parents.

There has always been something about that house that nurtured my creativity – I have written more stories there than anywhere else, and even now find that I can think better there than any other place I’ve ever been, or ever will be. Today my parents sold our house. But they have not sold our house, they have sold our home and as a result I have no longer have a place to go home to. Instead I will go to my parents’ house… in Atlanta… a city I’ve never even been to.

At the Gym

2005-11-02T02:07:00.000-05:00

occasionally (though not too often) interesting and amusing things happen to me at the gym...

(1) McGym
As I hand Mr. Orange Tan my membership card-
Dude: Do you want to hear about this totally amazing limited time deal we got going today?
Me: (early for my class) mmm... ok. I guess.
Dude: Ok, so if you pay for 3 years of gym memberships upfront, today, at your current rate, you will pay only 25 bucks a year for the rest of your life! (smiles big cheesy grin)
Thinking and calculating how much 3 years of membership would actually cost...
Me: So... that would be nearly $1400
Dude: Yup! It's a hell of a deal
Me: (laughing) Ok, so assuming that I could afford to pay you $1400 right now, which I can't, I probably won't even be around here for three years.
Dude: Oh, but that doesn't even matter! Pretty soon we're going to be like the McDonald's of gyms!!! (he's really excited now) We're going to be EVERYWHERE! (making big hand motions)
Me: (raising an eyebrow and grimacing slightly)
Dude: uh.... we're going to be the Starbucks of Gyms!
Me: (walks away)

(2) Creepy Guy?
Most Tuesdays Lauren and I go to a kickboxing class and I'm always a little bit annoyed by the guys who linger in the doorway just a little too long watching a mostly female class jumping and flailing about. There's always at least one and today was no exception.

I'm happily doing my triple-jab-cross punches when I notice a creepy looking guy in white track pants and glasses standing in the back of the class, looking around and laughing to himself. This is enough to get me going, but next thing I know, he pulls his camera phone out out of his pocket and starts taking pictures. Now usually I can restrain myself, but today I wasn't going to take it. I turned around and walked up to him:
Me: What do you think you're doing!!!!!!
Creepy guy: (not even looking up from his phone) I'm filming my wife.

I marched back up to my spot in the class, feeling a little bit foolish. But let's be honest, filming your wife or just filming girls in the class - both are a little bit creepy.

apokalupsis eschaton

2005-10-13T02:20:00.000-04:00

What exactly is an apocalypse? I asked myself this question as I started to tally up the natural disasters of the last year and began to wonder if the apocalypse was near… I had always thought the apocalypse meant “the end of the world,” and that it would be signified by a great many natural disasters leading to the extermination of man, if not the implosion of the earth itself. But is that actually the definition of apocalypse? Well, sort of. After a bit of research (ok, after browsing Wikipedia, which is hardly research) I found that the actual definition of apocalypse is a revelation or disclosure of hidden things (usually concerning the future). We often interpret this as the revelation of all things at the end of the world (a Judeo-Christian belief).

So, if we go by the definition that it is a revelation of future events, you could say that the apocalypse is not near – it is here! The apocalypse is not the end of the world, it is the preview. Is this the trailer for a movie coming to a theater near you:

Tsunami: 275,000 people killed
El Nino: Biblical rains and floods in Southern California send homes diving off cliffs
Hurricane Katrina and flooding of New Orleans: 1,242 people killed and over a million people displaced from their homes
Pakistan-Indian Earthquake: around 25,000 people killed, millions displaced

And these are just the major disasters. Forget the flames licking Southern California, or the deaths in Iraq – they are puny by comparison.

But then I wonder, have there really been more disasters this year than in years past, or am I just more aware of them? Have our preparation and responses to these disasters really been so dismal, or do we just have unreasonably high expectations? I don’t know the answers.

When I returned from my trip Peru I was stunned to find New Orleans mostly under water. With the government and social ties literally washed away, the people fulfilled Hobbes’ theory that without government man would be in a state of “nature red in tooth and claw.” The entire ordeal illustrated the vast incompetence of our leadership in the United States, and it greatly affected my faith in our form of government. The reason that people enter into the "social contract" and pay taxes and allegiance is for protection in return - from foreign attacks, from natural disasters, from hunger and pain. But when forced to actually fulfill its obligation to protect its people, our government failed, and failed knowingly! In the aftermath of the storm, social chaos ensued.

Granted, when you look at a disaster like Katrina in comparison with a Tsunami or the recent Earthquake, you might say that things could have been worse. But things could have been a whole lot better.
I am not sure whether the multitude of recent disasters is meant to be some sort of revelation of hidden knowledge by a higher power – but if we are smart, we will look at them as precisely that. I wish that people would realize that the apocalypse is never near. It is either here or it is not and it means nothing if you do not open your eyes to see it.

2005-10-05T02:10:00.000-04:00

Americans at their finest...

The "Mrs." Degree

2005-09-29T02:16:00.000-04:00

I am rarely so struck by an article in the newspaper that I find myself thinking about it in the shower, while making breakfast, on my drive to work, AND on the drive home, but I recently read the following article in the New York Times and did just that:
Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood By LOUISE STORY Women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. But many of these women say that is not what they want.

The article interviewed several young women at Ivy League universities and sited trends illustrating that more and more young women of "my generation" are planning to be stay at home moms. Intrigued by this notion and a bit befuddled by the tone of the article, I emailed it to my mom and a few of my girl friends and received the most interesting, diverse responses. For the benefit of debate, I will copy their comments here. I would be curious to hear your responses!

My mother:
Dear Jessica

Very interesting article! Im glad that someone is giving this some thought, Dad & I were just discussing it the other day. You're so lucky to be living in the "Internet age", Dad's company seems to have no problem with the "working from home" scenerio.....one of dad's co-workers, Michele, lives in Santa Cruz works from home, rarely comes into the office. Dad's big boss lives in New Jersey, works from home. It's becoming so common. I imagine by the time you have kids it will be fairly standard.

It also makes me feel good that young people are seeing the value of "stay at home mom's", I got alot of crap in the early years...It used to be an embarrassment to say "I'm a stay at home mom"....now I'm proud to say it!

Disney seems to be a company that value's family, that's clear....I bet they would totally support a woman that made the choice to cut back hrs & work from home,
You're a lucky girl.

Much Love
Mom
-----------------------
Kim:
you know, this is actually QUITE interesting.

the debate on women's issues concerning work and motherhood has gone on for a GOOD amount of time. this article brings out some interesting questions and observations:

-the second shift (work and home life) has been an INCREASINGLY dichotomy in the last 20 years, with women taking over jobs that require less time at home.
-more men have taken over the role of stay-at-home dad, and society (seems) to be taking this as ok.
-it seems that fewer incoming college women are not realizing the "out of the box" ideas that full-time working and full-time parenting can happen, no less for BOTH genders.
-as more companies begin providing on-site daycare, the problem of parenting OR working becomes less of an issue; however, this assumes one can obtain such a job and work at such a place.
-this survey definitely shows an upswing back into 1950s mentality of women not HAVING to work--the choice of whether or not they WANT to work brings an idea of fulfillment outside of current gender ideals for women.
-some would consider this a step back for the women's movement: is it? is feminism about taking power and control of one's life as a woman? (even if that means choosing to be traditional) or is it defying all traditional gender roles to create a space for girls to understand they aren't boxed in? hasn't that already been done? and why go to yale or harvard if you already intend on staying home (i totally don't believe in this one, but it's a good question nonetheless)? .....

------------------------
Kristy:
This article is VERY interesting and very true. I have been on abridal forum a lot recently and it is so strange for me to hear theslide towards traditionalism. While I think that in our currenteconomy/house prices it is pretty much impossible for a Californiawoman to quit working, I do know that many people are looking to getwhat Andrew calls an "Mrs" degree. Everyone wants to be a Mrs! Ihave yet to meet a woman who wants to keep her name (besides mycousins who never took their husbands names and my feminist friends).

Now to REALLY answer your question. I think it is tough for womento have it all. Somewhere, there is a chance that either home or workwill suffer. This isn't a garuntee, but it is a possibility.Especially since there are so many "bad" kids out there and lots of itis blamed on lack of parenting. There is still the issue of womenmaking ~74 cents to the male dollar. Well if two parents are raisinga child and one had to stay home, obviously the one making less will,right? Most of the time, that's the woman.

Thirdly, and this is where I fall into this group...many women justwant a break from working and see motherhood as an easy way out.Heck, I get TIRED from working so many hours and with all those kids! [fyi: Kristy teaches middle school] I would love to be able to take time off. Now does this mean that Iwant to stay at home all day with my rugrats? Not really. But maybe that's because I have never been a lover of young children. Hopefullymy own someday! All I know is that I hate cats, but I still love myChloe. :)

So we women have such high standards set for us from birth. Andof course, we try to do all that we can to reach it. But my guess is,many of us women are just getting lazy and want to slide back into the"old way", which seems easier. Yeah, its certainly easier, IF andONLY if you have a man who has evolved past the ways of the 1950s.That is something I think most women forget. Me? I'm just kissing the ground thanking the fact that Andrewcooks and cleans. Watch for me to be taking time off in 5 years, butas soon as I get sick and tired of that lifestyle, I will definitelybe back to work. Because, as you know, every smart woman needs achallenge. :-P
.......
-------------------------------

For myself, what I found interesting about the article was the author's attempt to suppress what I sensed was a tone of dismay - as though these ivy league girls were going to waste their education by being stay at home moms. I would have been interested to know what percentage of men are considering the option of being a stay at home dad or part time dad. For example, my boss' husband is a stay at home Dad and she works from home on Fridays. The article just assumed that because more women were willing to stay home, we are returning to more traditional gender roles (and as Kim later pointed out: just because the article interviewed 4 girls from northeastern ivy league schools doesn't mean it's a trend). In another light, I think this can be seen as a step forward in the women's movement because a woman can "choose" to be a stay at home mom and not be thought of as a second class citizen because of it. The idea that a woman's monetary value is her only value is simply absurd, and a truly backwards way of thinking.

The article also seemed to skirt around the real problem (which Kristy also touched upon) - that it's simply not possible to be the best parent when both you and your spouse/partner are working full time; and unlike our parents' generation, our generation can see that. Sure, there are plenty of parents who have pulled it off and do a reputable job, but not without a considerable amount of stretch and stress - mostly on the part of moms. If you're going to make it to your kids soccer practice and piano lessons, you're probably not working the long hours usually required to make it into high-power roles.

If and when I ever have kids, I imagine that I would try to take a year or two off, or position myself in a job that did not require me to always be at the office... but I would expect my husband to have the willingness to do the same. And therein lies the rub, which I think Kim, Kristy, my mother, and I all agree on: If you can find a man (or woman) who has evolved beyond that 1950's mentality of subservience - who can respect his or her partner for staying home and raising their kids, then that is all that really matters.

20 Minute Story (No. 1)

2005-09-26T02:53:00.000-04:00

For the last several months I have been experimenting with the 20 minute story. I sit and write uninterupted for 20 minutes (more or less) without editing or thinking too much. Most of them are fairly worthless, and perhaps this one is too. I wrote it a couple months ago and had forgotten it until I reread it tonight. Make of it what you will, I suppose....

She dug her feet into the sand gently. The water rushed up over her toes, her ankles, but then stopped there before rushing back out again. It’s funny how a wave seems to hesitate like that – and it’s an immeasurable amount of time, that moment when the water stops before rushing away like a blushing girl. How long did it stop for this time, she wondered? A second? One third of a second? It didn’t stop long enough.

The water was warmer because the air was cooler, but now the thrill of water’s tickle-kiss was fading.

He should have met her there at least twenty minutes ago now, and soon those tiny lines the moonlight made on the ocean’s rippling surface would glow less bright as the moon continued to recede. They only had two days left, and already she got the feeling that he was growing tired of her.

(His hand reached across the bar’s surface to rescue the falling strands of hair that were about to make their way into her cocktail, and when she looked up she didn’t look away.)

She was not often on beaches when there was no one else around. She was not often on beaches. Most things move too quickly, but she likes how quickly things move until she hesitates for that brief moment – the moment before rushing back out again – and she wonders if she’ll ever rush back out again.

She was not often on beaches when no one else was around. She was not often on beaches. Especially at night. The sand keeps its moisture at night and the night smelled like dewy flowers, which would have seemed right if he would ever show up, but she was nearly convinced that he would not. She heard leaves brush and the crackle of a few branches but did not turn her head. It could not be him, and even if it was, a rushed flip of the head, a flyaway strand of hair would be all too expected.

And it was him. It seemed so artificial. So contrived, he thought. The air smelled of dewy flowers and the moon sparkled on the water. He did not like such things. They bothered him because he had read it before in a book that he didn’t even enjoy or in a magazine at the dentist’s office. So he stood there watching her for a moment in silence wondering whether he should give up the proposition all together.

Without turning her head – knowing he was there – she spoke:

“Did you bring it?”

“I did.”

“Good.”

He approached her slowly and sat down next her, opening the case carefully, and pulling out the small guitar as though it were a child.

“What is it tonight?” She asked. “New or Old”

“New. It doesn’t even exist yet – the song. I thought tonight that I would just play and you can tell me stop when the song is over.”

“Why didn’t you write it first?”

He didn’t answer. He tuned a few of the strings and then began to play. With a song that already existed, she would say Yes or No within the first few moments of his tune and immediately those to which she said No were crumpled and thrown into the ocean or made to vanish into thin air. But with a song that didn’t exist, she wasn’t quite sure how she would be able to perform her service correctly. Her service was to say yes or no to songs, but if a song didn’t exist, what was she saying yes or no to?

She stared down at her feet as the water came up to meet the bottom of her flexed foot. With its contact he struck his first chord – minor. Fast and bitter sad. The wave rushed back out like a blushing girl and the chord broke into the million tiny pieces – the wave crackling and foaming as it sunk into the sand, the musician boy leaning over his small guitar with his eyes closed and his mouth torn into a sideways wandering grimace.

Was it Yes or No. Yes or No? She thought of Yes or No. Yes! or No! it wasn’t so calypso as it was a rage or rush of something else. It subsided and brewed off shore for a moment as it rolled into itself. And he lay his chin into his chest.

(I’m going to help you, she had said to him the moment she met him. I will help you I will help you I will help you.)

He could play whatever she wanted to hear now and he knew it. A week of these nights. Nights on beaches and nights on park benches and nights in her hotel room, and he could play whatever she wanted to hear. And was that all she wanted?

“No.” She said. But this time he did not stop. There was no paper to crumple up and throw into the ocean.

She knew that he could play exactly what she wanted to hear, and that he would no longer come to her, and for that reason she wanted to hear no more of what he played. She wanted those hands to stop plucking those strings. They seemed tied to her somewhere.

The wave pulled up over the sand but did not meet her this time. It stopped just before the end of her toe, and she reached out to meet it but couldn’t.

He shook his head and laughed but did not stop playing. Soft trembling things now. Soft and trembling murmuring, but angry and sarcastic things. She stood up. The music stopped. He grabbed her skirt.

“Wait” he said. “No wait!”

Walking down the beach and not stopping, he lay down his guitar and walked just behind her until the nearness of him made her stop.

“I cannot help you.” She said just above whispering. “I cannot help you I cannot help you I cannot.”

And as she said the words he could not bear the thought of them being true. And his heart leapt in his chest.
She dug her toes down into the cool damp sand and tried to keep herself from rushing back into the rush. She dug her toes down into the sand, and breathed a deep shuddering breath. How long could she stop this time? A second? A third of a second? Not long enough.

Metropolis (and things in print)

2005-09-19T02:08:00.000-04:00

If you didn't know already, I am an absolute magazine fiend... and my god, this is a fantastic magazine:

www.metropolismag.com

If you have any interest (at all) in design, architecture, and their social contexts... or just like pretty pictures and good writing, I offer Metropolis for your consideration.

My other recommendations include~
The New Yorker (a classic)
www.newyorker.com

Mc Sweeney's Quarterly Concern (Dave Eggers' journal)
www.mcsweeneys.net

Don’t Eat Guinea Pig with Germans in Peru… (and other observations)

2005-09-18T00:30:00.000-04:00

I needed to get out. This was the conclusion I came to back in May, and as a result of a somewhat random bout of inspiration while sitting around the drum table in my living room, Lauren and I decided that the best thing to do would be to go to Peru. I needed to get out of LA, and out of the United States, and out of the seeming rut I was in. I need to get out.

I had these vague notions of Peru that mostly stemmed from misty pictures of Machu Picchu and the knowledge that there was once a great people in Peru called the Incas, but in retrospect I had absolutely no clue what I would find in Peru. When people would ask me why Peru, I would ask: why not? – simply because I had no better response. But even after reading my Lonely Planet and a couple other guide books and feeling like I had a pretty good idea of where we were going, everything about Peru proved to be a great surprise. To write an expository piece about my adventure would take too many words, and so for now I will patchwork together some snapshots of my favorite parts:

In Peru there are no traffic rules and no lanes and cab drivers charge you whatever they wish unless you ask them ahead of time. Instead of stopping at intersections, they honk. They also like to honk at pedestrians and speed up to scare them out of the way.

A view that will take your breath away is one located above 11,000 feet. Just a short walk up to the top of an island in Lake Titicaca can literally take your breath away and leave you lightheaded. So can the sunset and 360* views of a lake so huge it could be an ocean.

Standing next to an outhouse and the giant cow in the dark on an island that had neither running water nor electricity and realizing that I have never seen so many stars in my entire life. We could live on a lot less, with a lot less, and still be happy. We would be no less human.

Would you like some potatoes with your… potatoes?

The 7 hour bus ride between Puno and Cuzco: The window that had to be taped shut and still couldn’t keep out the winter cold. Wearing the alpaca knit hat and gloves the entire way. The native women in their brightly colored skirts and bowler hats and dozen parcels each yelling at each other at 1 in the morning because they could not agree who owned which box of shampoo bottles.

At one point (I think while we were on one of the “local” busses again and stopped in the middle of nowhere) Lauren made the astute observation that a place is only made shady by the people in it. People who live in crumbling adobe homes in cities where dogs run stray have no reason to harm you simply because they are poor.

Arriving at Machu Picchu at sunrise, we soon made the decision to hike the trail to Huayna Picchu… I am awfully glad that the mountain was hidden in the cloud because I do not think we would have made the massive climb if we knew what we were getting ourselves into. But sitting at the very top and looking down at the ruined city from afar, I realized that the truly amazing thing about Machu Picchu is that no matter how much it is hyped up, it will always exceed one’s expectations. I have never experienced anything else like it in this world.

Listening to Frank Sinatra on a cell phone mp3 player while drinking Pisco Sours with cute German boys and feeling swoony drunk. There will never be another night like this. I was awfully glad that I could lean on Lauren’s shoulder on the walk back to our hostel that night. The streets were cobbled and dimly lit.

In those same cobblestone streets, a tiny girl squatting next to an ancient Incan wall on a Sunday morning – her pee streaming toward the gutter. She looks at me with worried brown eyes and behind her in the Plaza de Armas a great Catholic clergyman speaks. Flags flutter soundlessly in the cold clear air.

Fresh squeezed orange juice and an avocado sandwich on a sunny porch where two dogs sat quietly at our feet. A stray horse ran through the street and frightened a couple uniformed school girls who had just left class for the day. The old gentleman tried to run but could not catch up with his horse. Where is his horse now?

Roosters. Damn it, not again!

Learning a lesson: Don’t eat Guinea Pig with a German boy in Peru, there will not be enough meat for the two of you and they will bring it out with the head still attached – its malicious little teeth gleaming… Bernd had it right when he said: “If we were out in the wild and all there was to eat was Guinea Pig… we would starve.”

Awaking before sunrise in the rainforest to the eerie din of Howler Monkeys like a stormy wind creaking through the trees and vines. Later discovering a family of Howlers in the trees above our heads and quietly venturing off the trail, through the jungle to have a closer look. Their fur an even more fiery red… their black faces looking curiously back at us. Thinking how this was my childhood fantasy come true.

3 girls hiking through the jungle at night looking for bugs (and Lauren’s peal of screams when a giant spider used her as a launch pad.)

The novelty of hot running water and electricity after a time without it… and realizing that our trip was almost over. In that moment I knew that even after I was back in my own room in Los Angeles, I would never be the same again.

Adventures in Boredom - Part I

2005-08-09T13:00:00.000-04:00

It’s a hazy Tuesday morning in Burbank (not that I would know that, considering my proximity to a window, but I digress). It’s a hazy Tuesday morning on the 24th floor of the ever-looming Burbank Tower, and it seems that I am about to enter Day two of boredom induced by a severe dearth of things to do. No documents to create? No meetings to attend? Not even a single binder to organize or email to send. You might think this a very fortunate event - a cause for celebration - but one can only check her email and evite responses so many times before realizing that these activities have eaten a mere 40 minutes and are already stale.

First attempt to stave off boredom: try to do something business related and think of important-sounding questions to ask the CIO of IT at tomorrow’s Townhall meeting. After doing the required research on the company website, reading his bio, his strategic plans, I realize that knowing next to nothing about IT makes it next to impossible to think of any questions other than generic ones that will likely be addressed in his presentation. This was a ridiculous idea. Waste of time (success!)

Attempt numero dos: Try to think of what a realistic cloud looks like and attempt to replicate this image on a blue post-it note reminding me to ask Mike about macros. Clouds are surprisingly unrealistic, and rather cartoon like. Convinced that I am in the wrong department. Should surely be in cloud animation (don’t most cartoons have clouds?). Must make note of this talent.

Attempt the third: Make lists. It doesn’t really matter what I make lists of. I began by addressing work related questions I might ask my supervisor, such as who would be a good person to speak with about my interest in publishing. Perhaps a children’s editor or one of their magazine editors…
Digression 3.1 – Decided a little looky-look around the publishing website might be a good idea. Will become an expert on current publishing activity and impress someone enough to give me a job! When I came upon a publishing directory, I thought: marvelous! The holy grail! I can answer my own questions. Alas, it was but an alphabetical list of names and extensions. I was hoping for titles such as: “semi-junior head hauncho of children’s editorial staff who likes meeting with directionless interns” or “knowledge glut for Disneyish Magazine with lots of connections.” More aimless wandering and I learned about the new Fairies line of books (based off of Tinkerbell) and wonder whether this book was developed by an actual author or a marketing team who saw the fairies as a new synergy to sell candy and fairy wings.
Perhaps asking my supervisor is still a better path. I made a second, very careful almost perfect bullet point, but could think of no other questions for him. Hmm. (Stared blankly for a minute at my Mickey pencil.) Nothing. In need of a break from all this work, I started making lists of songs I might put on a mix cd for a friend. She likes beautiful things… happy things, so perhaps I will start with a little Shuggie Otis – Happy House or Sparkle City, and then ease her into Kings of Convenience – Toxic Girl. And then, oh yes! Feist with Mushaboom, which is so summery and light. I don’t think this is what Disney had in mind for me when they thought of how an intern might spend her day.

And suddenly (and soundlessly, I might add) a fellow coworker stoped at the opening of my cube. My computer had long since gone idle and my stomach sank a little as she stood there with a smile on her face. “Whadya doing???” she asked knowing quite well what the answer was. I frantically searched around for some excuse for work, but there was nothing. Just a mess of post-its with doodles of clouds, playlists, and half-baked questions. And so after a bloated pause, instead of making something up, I raised my eyebrows and answered honestly: “Nothing. Absolutely Nothing.”

Bits and Pieces

2005-08-05T02:00:00.000-04:00

The other day at work I went into a meeting. Since I am still getting my feet wet at this new job, I was trying to be really professional and not ogle my boss’ spectacular view. I had made neat little bullet points on my yellow legal pad and had restrained myself from doodling geometric floral architecture in the margins. I made pointed recommendations and gave succinct summaries of my projects, and all-in-all was feeling very businessy and “professional” (a virtue that I assure you is highly overrated). And then, as I am about to return to the cube my boss hands me and my fellow “team members” a booklet titled: Quality, Service, Teamwork: the foundations of excellence. She says nothing, just: Here you go! smiles, and gives us the look that says, “and now it’s time for you to leave…” As I flipped through the flimsy yellow and black pages I was bombarded with quotation after quotation. Little gems of wisdom such as: “Either we’re pulling together, or pulling apart, “ and, “The race for quality has no finish line.” And then, as I turned to the last page, I realized that I’d been had! A small synergistic triangle and the over arching word: Successories. Angie, Justin, and I had had a good laugh about this ridiculous line of inspirational books and accessories, ahem, I mean, successories… Who buys these things?!?! I asked in disbelief that such a company even existed. Well, apparently TWDC (aka “the mouse”). Seeing as I was given no instruction with this book, I am not quite certain what I am supposed to do with it. All suggestions will be taken into consideration.

*****
The I-5. In between Northern California and Southern California there is a vast abyss and a solemn bridge of road. A thin grey pencil-etched line alongside blonde, velvet rolling hills that are sometimes brandished by the silhouette of a black burned one. A picture with the contrast turned up too high. The stench of agriculture off to the other side. The I-5 and I… I am never sure if we are friends or enemies. I’d rather forget that all that space between home and … home never existed. I-5 and more than 5 hours of restless, unrelenting song to keep the paranoia of the car sounds away. Once I am back in the house I grew up in and floating atop the glassy black pool (how blinding is the sun), the distance doesn’t seem so great. It is mere hours between the two places… until I am back in my car mere hours later and forced to turn the music off because after 6 hours my ears are just too tired. I would just have to exchange Benny Goodman and Air and Bobby McFerrin for my car’s helter skelter humming. The humming that makes me think of the first time I drove this road all alone the maddening undistant distance. A space, a stretch that seems so long because of the thoughts that dwell in between.

curried

2005-07-16T02:50:00.000-04:00

There’s this girl that I know – Brandi - and I don’t think she knows how much joy she brings into my life. Every time we go out, life seems brighter and sunnier – she’s just one of those people. And when a dinner over Japanese curry comes at the end of such a monumental week as this, it’s all the more sweet. Sweeter than sesame laced mochi cakes from the ninja market on Sawtelle. Sweeter than memories we both have of times in Japan.

We only worked together for a few weeks, and we’ve both moved on to different places, yet that doesn’t seem to matter. “People come into your life for a reason,” she always says. It’s the sort of optimistic thing that I don’t say too much anymore, and yet it’s easy to believe it and not feel cynical about it when Brandi is around.

I remember, a few months back (on a late winter weekend when the rains had finally stopped) I was going to read by myself at the Coffee Bean on Main Street in Santa Monica (for lack of anything better to do) and there was Brandi, sitting there by herself with coffee, a magazine, and nothing on her agenda for the day. People often assume that you’ll never run into people in LA, but it’s simply not true. I run into people here – and I run into them for a reason. We sat out on the patio in the sun all afternoon, even when our cups of coffee had long been empty. She had just survived what should have been a fatal car crash, and I had just survived the worst winter depression I’d ever experienced, and yet we had so much hope and so many dreams that day.

This week, she just completed her first major job at work, and I completed my first week at Disney – there’s a lot to be happy about, I guess. And then I realized, there’s a lot to be happy about, not just because I spent my first day of work at the happiest place on earth, or just because I finally have a job that I think will challenge me. There’s a lot to be happy about because I have people in my life who can share in my milestones, big or small. Maybe I ought to be more cynical – but it’s just too exhausting after a while.

*** Side note: In other exciting news, you can find my very first published short-story in the July issue of the Los Angeles Journal – it’s a free journal you can find in various locations around town or at http://www.losangelesjournal.com

Thank heaven...

2005-07-11T03:00:00.000-04:00

Don't forget: as of this moment, it is 7-11, which means FREE SLURPEE DAY! It's gotta be my 3rd favorite holiday after Christmas and Halloween.

Minutiae

2005-07-11T02:17:00.000-04:00

My weekends are often filled with tiny nothings, but this weekend was filled with tiny (if bizarre) expeditions that make me feel like an explorer. Here is why:

1) I went to a drum core show in Diamond Bar with a boy I don't know very well, his sister, and his high school friends. Who knew that some people liked marching band so much that they would do it regardless of whether they were affiliated with any school or sports team. These are hard core marchers - wait, drum core... It made me realize how many niche markets exist out there. Apparently I'm in the market for professional marching band music. I even paid good money to see it. And afterwards, we passed by the lotus festival in Echo Park (in the dark) and somehow it was more eerie and beautiful that way.

2) Shopping in Pasadena. It seems like this far off place. It's past downtown and you traverse through multiple tunnels to get there, but once you get there it is this magical place where it actually feels like summer. You can eat frozen yogurt and it melts the way it should because it's HOT. You can feel it beaming off the pavement. In addition to the beautiful old buildings, there are old ladies who wear moomoos and lipstick that ventures out beyond the boundaries of their lips, and there are hot men who work at the J.Crew. mm hm. It does not matter that when they introduce themselves to you as "Ian," it is because they are commission whores. All that really matters is that my friends will humor me and try to convince me that one of them was checking me out.

I love these tiny bizarre adventures, and how they get sandwiched between conversations over frisbee and last days of work.

Liminality and the Embassy Suites Airport Hotel

2005-07-09T01:33:00.000-04:00

It’s funny. The moment I hand in my letter of resignation, the job that once seemed so unbearable doesn’t seem so bad anymore. I get up in the mornings, drive to work, everyone is congratulatory and wants to come chat. They’re sad to see me go, they say. They want to go out for last drinks and last lunches and they want my opinions about things that they never wanted my opinion about before. They tell me about all the potential I would have had if I had stuck around, and it would be enough to make me a little bit sad if I didn’t know better. It’s happened before – this post-resignation euphoria. It’s similar to the “grass is always greener theory” not just for you, but for your co-workers. And I suppose that the old adage about how we don’t know what we’re missing until it’s gone is a bit true.

But what am I saying? For the last nine months at least, all I could think about was how much I hated the day after day monotony of my job and its menial tasks. Next Tuesday I’ll be putting on the mouse ears, and after two weeks of post-resignation euphoria, I start to second guess myself. I suppose that’s perfectly rational. I am really looking forward to this new job which promises so many different opportunities, but for now, here is what I am going to miss:

I am going to miss Friday lunches. I am going to miss L. yelling at her kids over the phone, teeth clenched, booooyyy, imgonnawhoopyoass - and that look on her face at meetings that says I’m not even going to pretend that I like being here. I’m going to miss conversations with K. about circus freaks and llamas and ninjas that span for far longer than they ought to. And talks about spooning with dogs and killing fish with a garden hose. I’m going to miss Asians don’t do Oysters, and BB, you know blue balls, which really are purple, if we’re going to be honest. I’m going to miss the froot loop. I’m going to miss last Friday of the month food comas and haughty men who look with disdain at my hot pink shoes. I’m going to miss the way the six pillars of character are spoken of as though they were an inside joke even though we all secretly sort of believe in them.

And there you have it. Sitting around at happy hour tonight at the Embassy Suites Airport Hotel, I thought about what a bizarre, liminal space it is. People come and go. It is a portal. And yet, we’re here eating nachos, drinking beer, and toasting Roderick’s birthday. I suppose if I’m going to read into it, the Embassy Suites Airport Hotel represents what this year and this job have been for me – a space between. A space that I don’t want to linger in for very long. A space that is inevitably awkward and that doesn’t try to be otherwise. I think this is why this year has been so trying for me: this year is middle school and the Embassy Suites Airport Hotel and waiting rooms at doctors offices and laying in bed waiting for your snooze alarm to go off one last time. In retrospect, it’s all amusing. Spend enough time anywhere and you can be nostalgic about it.

The Chicken

2005-06-28T02:34:00.000-04:00

This morning on my drive to work I saw a chicken walking down Airport Boulevard through the morning fog. Not a pigeon. Not a seagull. A real-life red chicken like you might see on a farm somewhere in one of those red states. It was the highlight of my day.

Is that how it goes?

2005-06-18T12:37:00.000-04:00

Is that how it goes?

In a private karaoke room with friends, co-workers, and (oddly) co-workers' mothers there was enough laughter and joy and ham-titude to make all the follies of this week seem ridiculously small. The Stevies, the Brittanys, the Mariahs... it's strange, how singing along to these pop songs with a microphone can be so much more satisfying than singing along to them in your car. Forget about the LA recording scene, in our tiny room, everyone was a star. Especially Paul. He can sing them all, but when Eminem's 'Forget About Dre' started coming out of his mouth, the look on the faces of my co-workers' mothers nearly sent me out of the room. Paul wasn't the only one who knew all the lyrics - now Lana was chiming in and the two of them together were throwing their arms around like the real Dre and the real Slim Shady. Having tried to avoid eye contact with anyone, I finally turned to Justin who was in stitches and laughing so hard that he had to literally lay down. I wasn't sure what was more inappropriate - the obscenities flying around the room like fireworks, or Justin's (and my own) inability to contain our hysterics. Is that how it goes? That situations that are already awkward are made more-so by our laughter? Or does laughter mitigate the silence that surrounds situations in which we do not know how to act? Soon we moved on to more culturally appropriate power-ballads, but I'll still wonder what was going through the heads of the mothers, and whether their embarrassment was greater than my own.

Is that how it goes?

Five friends sitting around a table, gilded by bare bulbs on a Friday night. One friend on the verge of leaving as we silently contemplate melting a plastic monkeys tail. Did I say leaving? I think I meant going. When does leaving become going somewhere else - is it half-way between here and the destination point? Is it that walking away from Bar Marmont (Adieu, Adieu, he said) he was leaving, and as he pulls onto the 405 one last time, he is going? Going home, going somewhere exotic, going to grad school. My friend Oscar is going, now gone. And so are the afternoons meticulously interpreting the scribblings of children and evenings drinking cocktails out of tea cups. Don't people know it is so much harder to leave than to go? With friends like mine, I guess I'm just a lucky so and so.

thus spoke jet

2005-06-12T15:53:00.000-04:00

The concept of starting a blog has perplexed me for some time. I distinctly recall having a conversation with a friend of mine about a year and a half ago where we scoffed at those incessant bloggers and vowed to never submit to the shameless self promotion. Aren't there any aspects of our lives that are still sacred? we asked. Aren't there certain things better left unsaid and kept to ourselves for no one else to know? I wondered...

Why then, you might ask, have I opened myself to accusations of hypocrisy? Is it that I have gone against my principles? After all, I have been known to do so in the past - I bought a cell phone despite my promise that I never would. I drive my car to work everyday despite my cries that we are killing the earth with every rotation of the wheel. I eat meat when I know in my heart that the vegans are probably right. But these are the sacrifices I make to live in the modern world (or because I am too lazy to do otherwise). However, perhaps this is not so much a sacrifice as it is a realization. A realization that if I am ever to become the writer I ought to be, I need to write and summon the courage to let others read my words.

and thus spoke jet...