It’s been a while. I know. I’ve started three or four posts in the last few months and abandoned each in turn. It’s not that I have nothing to say. It’s just that it’s seemed more of my personal neuroses than somewhat cogent observation. You want heaps of my neuroses? I doubt it. But The Blog seems unavoidable just now: I’m in the midst of a self-imposed solitary confinement. In other words, I’m cat-sitting for a week and a half. Alone. In a house. In Hollywood. The weather is obliging my mood and cravings – it’s been raining for the last three days and that in itself has been a great comfort. It should be raining in October. I should be wearing a sweater and fishing my tights out of my dresser. (Or my dog’s mouth, as of late.) I should be making tea around the clock and knitting a scarf. My internal clock doesn’t tick down to motherhood; it ticks down to Fall. Four years in perpetually-autumnal Portland and two years in equally grey Bordeaux will do that, I suppose.
I have five goals for this week and a half in Hollywood: (and not necessarily in this order)
1. do some bitchin’ block printing
2. do some LA exploration
3. do some fierce reading
4. do some job huntin’
5. do some story finishing for my collaborative storytelling project.
I totally have goals 1 and 2 down. My friend from college, who also happens to be returning to LA from a long-term stint abroad, asked me if I’d be interested in taking a printmaking class with her at an adult art school and I said “heck yeah!” That started last night, and between that and our pregaming “cr-afternoon,” I’ve had my hands nail deep in linoleum. I remember the afternoon I decided printmaking was for me, but it was such an un-researched and impulsive decision. I saw a linoleum block. I saw the metal gouges. I saw black and gold ink. And then there was my debit card. No book. No real knowledge. No rules. Just goes to show – sometimes those impulses are instincts. In any case, it’s been great.
Number two has been a little more free form. Over the course of the summer and many car rides with my brother, I’ve come to understand and accept that I’ve never given LA a fair trial. A lot of my bitterness towards this sprawling behemoth stems from very negative feelings about high school and that deep-seated urge to “get the fuck out of here.” I may have grown up in nice, family-friendly LA suburb Pasadena, but I learned how to be an adult (uhh.. sort of) in a city staggeringly different: Portland, the other City of Roses. I learned how to ride the bus in Portland, to walk to the grocery store, to pay my utility bills, covet tight-trousered hipsters, gaze at tattoos, drink and make coffee, make friends with strangers, and mow a lawn with an edger.
Those are invaluable skillz, by the way. (What did I learn in Bordeaux? How to drink like a man. How to be ruthless. How to make children cry. How to send regrettable text messages. How to eat. How to stare. How to laugh and ride unsafe Ferris wheels. How to be myself.)
So I resent LA and distrust LA and loathe LA because I don’t know it. We’ve never gotten intimate on my terms. I’ve never hopped on a bus here and just gone. My aimless moseying has been necessarily limited to tract neighborhoods where danger and mystery present themselves in the dark mass of cats and menacing trash cans. UNTIL NOW.
Now I’m saying “yes” when people invite me places. I’m venturing on to the surprisingly clean Metro and putting on my walking shoes. This last weekend I had my tattoo touched up in Melrose (a different part of Hollywood) and found myself tramping down Hollywood Blvd for the first time ever. You know it – the street with the stars on the sidewalk? Yeah. That one. It was incredible, and I couldn’t stop smiling. Tourists! Dorky fanny packs and khaki zip-offs and maps and huge cameras and people being conned out of their money! Fabulous! A revelation!
Here are some fine photos from recent jaunts:
Downtown LA in its nighttime blurry taken-from-a-car glory
Late night Chinatown
Someone at Jones is my hero.
West Hollywood apartment complex
posted directly across the street from "NUDE GIRLS NUDE GIRLS NUDE GIRLS"
fleur from our garden
trolloping around Venice in a sensible skirt
why yes, that is the beginning of the Walk of Fame
that old scalawag, Mann's Chinese Theater
the sight-iest sight for sore eyes since I crossed the Atlantic. (Fantastic) French patisserie mid-stumble on my walk around downtown yesterday. Perhaps the best Caprese 'wich I've had ever. Certainly the best potato salad. Whole grain mustard. Oh BABY.
OH BABY x 500
down to business. walking, architectural sight-seeing business.
And, lest we forget:
3. I just finished “Man Walks Into a Room” by Nicole Krauss and you need to get your sweaty mitts on it now. I was predisposed to hating Nicole because she’s the wife of my literary soul mate, Jonathan Safran Foer, but I admit it: she won him fair and square, and her writing is at least as good as his. I truly hope their union is lifelong and joyous. This book has been blowing my mind since its first chapter.
4. Want to hire me? I’m available. Actually, keep your fingers crossed. I hope to be ingratiating myself into an apprenticeship at a letterpress downtown sometime this week. They don’t know it yet, but I’m perfect for the job they haven’t created.
5. What’s this, you say? A storytelling project you’ve heard nothing about? I write things sometimes. http://bedtimephoto.wordpress.com.
Back in the saddle, mes amis.
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