curried

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...

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

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

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

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?

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

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...