In the second grade I got Daisy. I’d never had a Daisy before, and just thinking about Daisy recently I sent my mom on an immediate mission to find a 7 year old Rebecca photographed with a puppy of a Daisy because I believe quite certainly there could be nothing cuter than a gawky 7 year old me with that little slice of golden earthly perfection.
Daisy was a slice of delicious childhood. She was puppy in the ways all people, even the most hardened among us, adore puppies. She loved play, as if it was her job, and she loved us like nothing else mattered. When we got a cat, she stepped aside, and let the cat be the boss, as any good dog would. When my parents would fight, she’d hide with us and be our protector. She was a good couch pillow, and it was only after walking her wearing roller skates that I learned even the best laid plans go array. Daisy was a golden retriever. Where her retriever skills failed (you want me to fetch what?), she was certainly golden.
That golden girl got old and we refused to let her go. Even when arthritis and seizures took over, we fought it, requiring the doctor to fix her woes, as if he was more of a magician. But maybe he was part magician. And her, other part, magic.
As a social person intent of making as many friends as earthly possible, requiring to meet and speak to every person in any particular bar I step foot, it’s oddly peculiar that my closest confidants have been my pets.
The day I got laid off from my last job I came home and laid my body on my chaise, my head on the couch edge and wept to myself. Sophie came up alongside that small part where my hip curves in to my torso and sat herself down. She looked up at me once, in the eyes, and then nothing else needed to be said. She’d told me we’d get through this. Years before that when all my friends had gone home after a late ending party to their significant others, I came home, with more energy than I could direct in any particular direction. And so I danced. I picked up Sophie and we danced to whatever Top 40 nonsense was playing. Eventually she tired of fighting and eased in to the notion, she’d just have to withstand my love. It's been 10 years of breaking her down slowly with my love. When I got in to college, she was next to me opening up my mail. When my LSAT scores said I’d get a scholarship to law school, there she was. She’s lived in every apartment with me since I was 20 years old, met every boy I’ve ever dated, and some day I hope her to meet someone I date worthy of being called a man. She prefers football, but she doesn’t mind me staying in on a Friday night with Vin Scully calling the night’s Dodger game.
Pets tell the story of your life.
It’s difficult to see turning 30 in a few months and not see my pet as a storyteller of my early adult life. She’s like this vault of knowledge. A keeper of my tales. And through magic I will keep her to be my trusty book for life, my best companion.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
I must not disappoint those who now come to expect daily postings on the memoirs, and because I've been working on something to be ready for Thursday's posting, you fine people may, if you wish, read what I read to the teachers of Haddon Elementary and LAUSD on the day of my mom's retirement from school teaching.
She said she loved it, but God pays her to say that.
I think it’s significantly hard to look back at my more prolific teachers, and not see them in part as parental figures. Five days a week, morning till afternoon, breakfast through lunch, and if you’re naughty you may be around for dinner. They reinforce what’s right, and oh do they let you know when you’ve done wrong. They lay the brick and mortar of knowledge that you’ll build on for life. And if they’re a good teacher, they’ll make you ravenous enough where you’re never content. You will seek, and you will wander, search and question, always knowing there is more to know, better ways to do the same old thing, a glimmer and an idea for a way to make this tired world a better place. Knowing in the end knowledge is only important if it’s used and translated in to wisdom, to not create heads of floating data and dates and places and pages of textbook, but wise, strong people who will take their education and become better people in the world.
With teachers being so parental, it’s hard to not see my mom as one I’ve shared with so many children through the years. My mom loves sharing the story about when she was pregnant with my sister, and having little problem in making what I was thinking and feeling very clear even as a 3 year old climbed up on her with the admission, “Mom, I was thinking. I’m very worried once the baby comes; you won’t have as much time to spend with me.” She expressed amusement, and assured me, she’d be able to split her time fairly. If my memory serves me, she made good on that pledge.
She’s had to do exactly that for years - split herself in pieces, being teacher, confidant, advisor, authoritarian, dancer, chorographer, and artist 32 times over. Months becoming school years becoming decades. I can’t imagine that was ever easy for her, but she did it well – and I’d like to give credit where credit is due - I benefited.
I’m a different sort of folk. I annoy my friends to all ends with my, “..but why?, I research cities and weather patterns of places I’ve never been, I get calls from people who know I will know how to find the answer to just about anything, I Google, and I question, and I seek, and I search, and I pull out my Iphone at the dinner table to look things up, and I’m never, I am never, satisfied, with who I am, or what I know, or what I think I know. I think that’s the beauty that comes from being the daughter of a teacher. I am smarter, and wiser, and a better person in the world because I come from the home of a teacher.
But all would be of little importance without this. My grandmother has this quote. Of all the quotes, and all the stories, she tells and tells again, it’s the one I have heard the most often. She says, “Find what you love, and you’ll never have to work.” It took years, and the internet, before discovering alas my grandmother was not the original author of these words. But in keeping with tradition, with all things I enjoy from the lips of my mother, and her mother, I have continued to repeat it as if it was them who authored them always. “Find what you love, and you’ll never have to work.”
Eventually the body asks for its toll, and we can’t go on forever. Eventually we all must slow down. But I have to imagine it’s awfully gratifying to do that with a rear view mirror’s view of a career you’ve loved. My mother’s mother said it to her, and my mother said it to me, and I only ask that of everything I’ve learned from my mom as a teacher, the most valuable lesson, the last lesson she will teach, is that I find something I love, as she had.
She said she loved it, but God pays her to say that.
I think it’s significantly hard to look back at my more prolific teachers, and not see them in part as parental figures. Five days a week, morning till afternoon, breakfast through lunch, and if you’re naughty you may be around for dinner. They reinforce what’s right, and oh do they let you know when you’ve done wrong. They lay the brick and mortar of knowledge that you’ll build on for life. And if they’re a good teacher, they’ll make you ravenous enough where you’re never content. You will seek, and you will wander, search and question, always knowing there is more to know, better ways to do the same old thing, a glimmer and an idea for a way to make this tired world a better place. Knowing in the end knowledge is only important if it’s used and translated in to wisdom, to not create heads of floating data and dates and places and pages of textbook, but wise, strong people who will take their education and become better people in the world.
With teachers being so parental, it’s hard to not see my mom as one I’ve shared with so many children through the years. My mom loves sharing the story about when she was pregnant with my sister, and having little problem in making what I was thinking and feeling very clear even as a 3 year old climbed up on her with the admission, “Mom, I was thinking. I’m very worried once the baby comes; you won’t have as much time to spend with me.” She expressed amusement, and assured me, she’d be able to split her time fairly. If my memory serves me, she made good on that pledge.
She’s had to do exactly that for years - split herself in pieces, being teacher, confidant, advisor, authoritarian, dancer, chorographer, and artist 32 times over. Months becoming school years becoming decades. I can’t imagine that was ever easy for her, but she did it well – and I’d like to give credit where credit is due - I benefited.
I’m a different sort of folk. I annoy my friends to all ends with my, “..but why?, I research cities and weather patterns of places I’ve never been, I get calls from people who know I will know how to find the answer to just about anything, I Google, and I question, and I seek, and I search, and I pull out my Iphone at the dinner table to look things up, and I’m never, I am never, satisfied, with who I am, or what I know, or what I think I know. I think that’s the beauty that comes from being the daughter of a teacher. I am smarter, and wiser, and a better person in the world because I come from the home of a teacher.
But all would be of little importance without this. My grandmother has this quote. Of all the quotes, and all the stories, she tells and tells again, it’s the one I have heard the most often. She says, “Find what you love, and you’ll never have to work.” It took years, and the internet, before discovering alas my grandmother was not the original author of these words. But in keeping with tradition, with all things I enjoy from the lips of my mother, and her mother, I have continued to repeat it as if it was them who authored them always. “Find what you love, and you’ll never have to work.”
Eventually the body asks for its toll, and we can’t go on forever. Eventually we all must slow down. But I have to imagine it’s awfully gratifying to do that with a rear view mirror’s view of a career you’ve loved. My mother’s mother said it to her, and my mother said it to me, and I only ask that of everything I’ve learned from my mom as a teacher, the most valuable lesson, the last lesson she will teach, is that I find something I love, as she had.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
In an addendum to yesterday's post, I'd like to add "not listening to conversations in the gym locker room" to the previously written, "don't look around." Because when you look around, and you listen, you hear two valley girls engaging in something that sounds like:
Girl #1: "No cause I'm pretty sure there's no wi-fi in an orphanage."
And girl #2: "But maybe. I don't know."
Girl #1: "No cause I'm pretty sure there's no wi-fi in an orphanage."
And girl #2: "But maybe. I don't know."
Monday, June 29, 2009
Somewhere in Outer Space
In a general effort to, “get my life together,” I’ve spent the better part of the last 6-8 months searching for new gainful employment, finding new and inventive ways to stretch the same 100 pennies in one American dollar to buy me all the things I need to live in a recession, getting myself and keeping myself a new firefighting man, making Rebecca 2.0 ready and in fighting weight for a 30th birthday fast approaching through frequent and long staying trips to the gym, being the sort of dodger fan the best team in baseball deserves, and of course zestfully checking off bucket list items on my mama gena list. The mama gena list (research her if you must), when not instructing me to get a facial and get new bras, register for a intro stand up class, and convince my landlord to let me get a saint Bernard in my small one bedroom apartment I already share with two cats, is also a place I list my great writing ideas I’m certain would be the toast of the town. As such, I find little time to give blonde memoirs the tender loving care she so earnestly desires and deserves, and for that, I’m a bad blogger and I apologize to her, and to you. But if my exboyfriend’s girlfriends have time to droan on on their blog, and I have time to read it, I certainly have time to update this.
This update has zero to do with a text message I just got from a one, Erin Elizabeth Evans, of Brentwood California, with the body, “you do realize it’s been exactly 8 months today since you’ve written on blonde memoirs.”
Zilch.
I think it’s fair to say I put a little something, shall we say, of excess, in to style. It doesn’t come from nowhere. I’m a child of this city, where looking good means you have a fighting chance. My mom put a lot of stock in appearance. You would never know from that easter Kentucky derby type hat she always put me in, or the mother sister sister matching cinco de mayo outfits which we threatened to wear to her recent retirement party. You would never know from the Mervyn’s threads that followed me through my youth or the enormous head enveloping white bow bought and put on me for my 6th grade graduation.
I think if you went to my mother’s house, on any day of the week, let’s pretend and say tomorrow, and woke her up out of a dead sleep at 4am, she’d have matching pajamas with earings, a necklace, and several bracelets that she’d be more angry with you that you hadn’t complimented her on, than that you broke in to her home, and woke her up from a dead sleep. Bless her heart, but being her daughter is a lot of work, and it requires a lot of love.
It also requires a lot of funds. Funds to purchase Guess’ new hot pink pumps to round out my Barbie style portfolio. Funds to get my hair did. Funds that are absent in a global recession. Still I try and try I do, by bringing things out of retirement and matching them up with skirts and pearls that seemed unlikely pairs in fashion years before.
Today I went to the gym at lunch, like every day before it. I kept my eyes peeled on my locker and changed as quickly as my little limbs could climb out of my threads to give me the maximum hour lunch break to get my sweat on. Very uncouth to look left or right at anything except locker number 109 in front of me, as I’d expect others to give me the same respect, when something shiny, and something blue, probably old and probably borrowed, caught my focused eye. It was a skirt, and a shirt, and shoes, and while I tried not to stare, and I tried to keep focused, I tried to balance on my right foot while lacing the left, I had to cover my mouth to not blurt out, “oh no you are not wearing those things together.” “Oh and the shoes. The horror of those shoes.”
Who really had I become? Judging probably a very nice woman, huming the Monday blues in her, well, blue mismatched outfit. A nice woman trying to do her body good with a tall glass of a lunch time workout. I don’t like I judged her, but that doesn’t make that outfit ok.
I needed answers.
Around the same time my mom got inside my head with all sorts of nonsense I take to the pen and paper to illustrate, she also taught me something of value. At one point in early Rebecca-hood I had this concept that the world needed to hear every thing I thought in my head. In a loving talk, she said to me this. “Rebecca, how about whenever you have the vaguest inclination perhaps you shouldn’t say something, you have a system devised where you have to think about it a bit.” At that time I believe I was in the 3rd grade, and working on a solar system diorama in a payless shoe store shoe box, and so we decided out there in the silver Volvo on a hot valley day, when I thought of something perhaps I shouldn’t say, I’d recite first all the major planets in my head.
It was a helpful method. So helpful, I pretty much forget just about everything that wouldn’t be constructive, and much of what is.
A blonde was in the making.
If you look at me and I have a blank stare, or if I’m thinking real hard, trust I’m somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, and that mismatched outfit standing squarely to my right.
This update has zero to do with a text message I just got from a one, Erin Elizabeth Evans, of Brentwood California, with the body, “you do realize it’s been exactly 8 months today since you’ve written on blonde memoirs.”
Zilch.
I think it’s fair to say I put a little something, shall we say, of excess, in to style. It doesn’t come from nowhere. I’m a child of this city, where looking good means you have a fighting chance. My mom put a lot of stock in appearance. You would never know from that easter Kentucky derby type hat she always put me in, or the mother sister sister matching cinco de mayo outfits which we threatened to wear to her recent retirement party. You would never know from the Mervyn’s threads that followed me through my youth or the enormous head enveloping white bow bought and put on me for my 6th grade graduation.
I think if you went to my mother’s house, on any day of the week, let’s pretend and say tomorrow, and woke her up out of a dead sleep at 4am, she’d have matching pajamas with earings, a necklace, and several bracelets that she’d be more angry with you that you hadn’t complimented her on, than that you broke in to her home, and woke her up from a dead sleep. Bless her heart, but being her daughter is a lot of work, and it requires a lot of love.
It also requires a lot of funds. Funds to purchase Guess’ new hot pink pumps to round out my Barbie style portfolio. Funds to get my hair did. Funds that are absent in a global recession. Still I try and try I do, by bringing things out of retirement and matching them up with skirts and pearls that seemed unlikely pairs in fashion years before.
Today I went to the gym at lunch, like every day before it. I kept my eyes peeled on my locker and changed as quickly as my little limbs could climb out of my threads to give me the maximum hour lunch break to get my sweat on. Very uncouth to look left or right at anything except locker number 109 in front of me, as I’d expect others to give me the same respect, when something shiny, and something blue, probably old and probably borrowed, caught my focused eye. It was a skirt, and a shirt, and shoes, and while I tried not to stare, and I tried to keep focused, I tried to balance on my right foot while lacing the left, I had to cover my mouth to not blurt out, “oh no you are not wearing those things together.” “Oh and the shoes. The horror of those shoes.”
Who really had I become? Judging probably a very nice woman, huming the Monday blues in her, well, blue mismatched outfit. A nice woman trying to do her body good with a tall glass of a lunch time workout. I don’t like I judged her, but that doesn’t make that outfit ok.
I needed answers.
Around the same time my mom got inside my head with all sorts of nonsense I take to the pen and paper to illustrate, she also taught me something of value. At one point in early Rebecca-hood I had this concept that the world needed to hear every thing I thought in my head. In a loving talk, she said to me this. “Rebecca, how about whenever you have the vaguest inclination perhaps you shouldn’t say something, you have a system devised where you have to think about it a bit.” At that time I believe I was in the 3rd grade, and working on a solar system diorama in a payless shoe store shoe box, and so we decided out there in the silver Volvo on a hot valley day, when I thought of something perhaps I shouldn’t say, I’d recite first all the major planets in my head.
It was a helpful method. So helpful, I pretty much forget just about everything that wouldn’t be constructive, and much of what is.
A blonde was in the making.
If you look at me and I have a blank stare, or if I’m thinking real hard, trust I’m somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, and that mismatched outfit standing squarely to my right.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
My Tiny Head
I've never had any direct problems with my head. I once hit it on the pavement at a swim meet and spent the next day in emergency. Later I miscounted the amount of strokes to the wall during a backstroke set, and slammed my head in to the wall. (That happened no less than 14 times). My dad threw a basketball at my head thinking I was looking. I was not.
And last Tuesday I bent over and hit my head on a doorknob. Morning and evening.
I've never had trouble fitting my head in ballcaps and headbands. I have 4 Dodger hats bought from a normal persons sort of store. They fit just fine. I have a hat I bought solely on the off chance I get a last minute call to go to the Kentucky Derby. I had no trouble finding or fitting in to that hat.
My head, it's in equal proportion to my body, looking generally the same in size to everyone else in pictures, and since I have no other choice but an expensive not yet invented plastic surgery and years of recovery, I will keep it.
It's just my head, it feels a bit tinier than it ought to be, when I think of dating.
Once I dated someone for a month and a half who one day told me he had to walk our friends dog - and never returned. Another time I thought I'd received all the positive signs to later find out I was being enlisted in a pyramid scheme. I've looked far and long, from Tennessee to Texas, New York to Arizona, across all the nations 4 corners. For a year and a half I dated someone, who one day, just didn't respond to a text message, to never to be heard from again.
My dating adventures are, for lack of a theasaurous in arms reach, adventorous, and if it wasn't for my due diligence very possible they all are victims of the same kidnapper. But alas they are living and thriving and leaving me an exhausted shell of the spirited upbeat dater I once was.
It's just, I can't wrap it around my unusually normal sized yet tiny head. So I won't. But I best not beat it up hitting the pool wall. I may just never be able to understand it at all. And I must remain sharp to punch them all in the face should we ever meet again.
And last Tuesday I bent over and hit my head on a doorknob. Morning and evening.
I've never had trouble fitting my head in ballcaps and headbands. I have 4 Dodger hats bought from a normal persons sort of store. They fit just fine. I have a hat I bought solely on the off chance I get a last minute call to go to the Kentucky Derby. I had no trouble finding or fitting in to that hat.
My head, it's in equal proportion to my body, looking generally the same in size to everyone else in pictures, and since I have no other choice but an expensive not yet invented plastic surgery and years of recovery, I will keep it.
It's just my head, it feels a bit tinier than it ought to be, when I think of dating.
Once I dated someone for a month and a half who one day told me he had to walk our friends dog - and never returned. Another time I thought I'd received all the positive signs to later find out I was being enlisted in a pyramid scheme. I've looked far and long, from Tennessee to Texas, New York to Arizona, across all the nations 4 corners. For a year and a half I dated someone, who one day, just didn't respond to a text message, to never to be heard from again.
My dating adventures are, for lack of a theasaurous in arms reach, adventorous, and if it wasn't for my due diligence very possible they all are victims of the same kidnapper. But alas they are living and thriving and leaving me an exhausted shell of the spirited upbeat dater I once was.
It's just, I can't wrap it around my unusually normal sized yet tiny head. So I won't. But I best not beat it up hitting the pool wall. I may just never be able to understand it at all. And I must remain sharp to punch them all in the face should we ever meet again.
Friday, October 24, 2008
A literal narrative in beauty
The "theys" of the world say LA has no seasons. We don't. We have fires and we have earthquakes. We have mudslides, and we have the most unnatural of disasters in an entertainment industry. My friend Bill in Chicago, content apparently with sub zero temperatures and lake snow effect, says he'd never live in LA. Seasons, he says, is what keeps him in Evanston. I like Bill but he's wrong about a lot of things.
Bill in Evanston keeps Bill out of LA and one less Bill on the 105, and the 605, and the 10 East, and the 405 South. So Bill can stay in Evanston. But if Bill stumbled upon my blog, he'd get not a tutorial in Chicago or LA or freeway traffic or things he's wrong about but a written essay, a literal narrative in beauty. And here it goes.
A society sysincly accustomed to excess. A population encouraged to live in future wants. A happiness always slightly out of reach. Out of touch. A people out of touch.
It's actually very simple to have too much of something. Too much coffee. Too much work. Too much wine. We're familiar without much more example of a planet supple with excess, and a people not shy of having too much.
Bill of Evanston needs dire long winters, piles of autumn leaves, densely humid summers, drastic seasonal change, just as an investment banker needs gobs of cash, and a kept lady needs another handbag, one more pair of Manolos, a better car.
Bigger better faster larger smaller more efficient newer more more, just honestly more. For the love of God, more of it all.
I have a Tivo that thinks it knows me. It recommends television shows I wouldn't watch. Last week I came home and it had recorded three episodes of Sesame Street and that afternoon's Ducktails.
My Tivo thinks I'm a 3 year old.
I tried to tell it, through the technological specified ways, that I was actually 28, going on 29. I came home the next day, to recordings of boxing, MMA, and a really awkward girl on girl mudwrestling championship. 28 and female, Tivo, female.
I turned off the suggestions feature.
As someone who works in technology I'm an odd person to be astonished by new media, but I am. Odd. And astonished.
My GPS, correctly, globally, positioning, via a satellite, my exact location. It knows where I am at all the time. All the damn time. It blows my mind. But at the end of the day and the beginning of the next one and every day after that, I know LA better than it. I know that canyon where it narrows to one lane and creates a logging effect down the hill. I know that driveway where it's pretty darn near impossible to turn. I know four emergency vehicles in front of me telling me you can't go through a street. I know the best way home from my Mom's house. But that GPS, well her and I never really seem to be on the same page. Our drives together are a series of verbal outbursts by me and her, "REROUTING ROUTE REROUTING ROUTE REROUTING ROUTE." We still don't agree the best way to get home from the north valley, but yesterday she said "Please Make a U-Turn Only When It's Safe," and it was then I knew she was starting to get me. I waited until it was safe, and then I didn't listen to her after that.
A world of more bigger better has pushed out a technology trying to get to know me. It wants to know what shows I like. It wants to tell me how to get around in my own city, it reads my e-mails and it personalizes ads. My teeth are white enough thank you very much google g-mail ads.
I know what shows I like, and sometimes yes they may be Sesame Street. And I know how to get around my own city, not always, but it's then I will rely on the woman in my GPS. I'm OK with the amount of money in my bank account. It could be less and it could be more, but I will be happy all the same. Ten pairs of shoes or one to suffice. Happiness lives somewhere else.
Happiness lives with beauty. In beauty's guest house. Whereas bigger better more excess ignites a boundary of too much, you can never have too much beauty. Never will I love my sister too much, or that gingerbread candle smell too amazing. I don't think I will ever say I have had too much Vivaldi and he plays on medium volume through my car stereo and I drive through the small collection of autumn leaves pieced around the road on my drive to the office. So that's the catch with beauty, Bill from Evanson. You can never have too much of it, but can live on the smidgest of amounts. A one sentence text from my best friend. When my favorite one year old dives in to her birthday cupcakes hairless head first. LA doesn't have drastic seasons, but Bill from Evanston is still wrong. Because if you're looking for happiness, you'll find it. And if you're looking for beauty, if you're looking for a fall morning in LA where just a small pocket of leaves have gathered and they crisp under the drive of your tires you will find it here, just as you will find it in Evanston. If you're looking for beauty, you will find it pretty much anywhere you seek it.
Bill in Evanston keeps Bill out of LA and one less Bill on the 105, and the 605, and the 10 East, and the 405 South. So Bill can stay in Evanston. But if Bill stumbled upon my blog, he'd get not a tutorial in Chicago or LA or freeway traffic or things he's wrong about but a written essay, a literal narrative in beauty. And here it goes.
A society sysincly accustomed to excess. A population encouraged to live in future wants. A happiness always slightly out of reach. Out of touch. A people out of touch.
It's actually very simple to have too much of something. Too much coffee. Too much work. Too much wine. We're familiar without much more example of a planet supple with excess, and a people not shy of having too much.
Bill of Evanston needs dire long winters, piles of autumn leaves, densely humid summers, drastic seasonal change, just as an investment banker needs gobs of cash, and a kept lady needs another handbag, one more pair of Manolos, a better car.
Bigger better faster larger smaller more efficient newer more more, just honestly more. For the love of God, more of it all.
I have a Tivo that thinks it knows me. It recommends television shows I wouldn't watch. Last week I came home and it had recorded three episodes of Sesame Street and that afternoon's Ducktails.
My Tivo thinks I'm a 3 year old.
I tried to tell it, through the technological specified ways, that I was actually 28, going on 29. I came home the next day, to recordings of boxing, MMA, and a really awkward girl on girl mudwrestling championship. 28 and female, Tivo, female.
I turned off the suggestions feature.
As someone who works in technology I'm an odd person to be astonished by new media, but I am. Odd. And astonished.
My GPS, correctly, globally, positioning, via a satellite, my exact location. It knows where I am at all the time. All the damn time. It blows my mind. But at the end of the day and the beginning of the next one and every day after that, I know LA better than it. I know that canyon where it narrows to one lane and creates a logging effect down the hill. I know that driveway where it's pretty darn near impossible to turn. I know four emergency vehicles in front of me telling me you can't go through a street. I know the best way home from my Mom's house. But that GPS, well her and I never really seem to be on the same page. Our drives together are a series of verbal outbursts by me and her, "REROUTING ROUTE REROUTING ROUTE REROUTING ROUTE." We still don't agree the best way to get home from the north valley, but yesterday she said "Please Make a U-Turn Only When It's Safe," and it was then I knew she was starting to get me. I waited until it was safe, and then I didn't listen to her after that.
A world of more bigger better has pushed out a technology trying to get to know me. It wants to know what shows I like. It wants to tell me how to get around in my own city, it reads my e-mails and it personalizes ads. My teeth are white enough thank you very much google g-mail ads.
I know what shows I like, and sometimes yes they may be Sesame Street. And I know how to get around my own city, not always, but it's then I will rely on the woman in my GPS. I'm OK with the amount of money in my bank account. It could be less and it could be more, but I will be happy all the same. Ten pairs of shoes or one to suffice. Happiness lives somewhere else.
Happiness lives with beauty. In beauty's guest house. Whereas bigger better more excess ignites a boundary of too much, you can never have too much beauty. Never will I love my sister too much, or that gingerbread candle smell too amazing. I don't think I will ever say I have had too much Vivaldi and he plays on medium volume through my car stereo and I drive through the small collection of autumn leaves pieced around the road on my drive to the office. So that's the catch with beauty, Bill from Evanson. You can never have too much of it, but can live on the smidgest of amounts. A one sentence text from my best friend. When my favorite one year old dives in to her birthday cupcakes hairless head first. LA doesn't have drastic seasons, but Bill from Evanston is still wrong. Because if you're looking for happiness, you'll find it. And if you're looking for beauty, if you're looking for a fall morning in LA where just a small pocket of leaves have gathered and they crisp under the drive of your tires you will find it here, just as you will find it in Evanston. If you're looking for beauty, you will find it pretty much anywhere you seek it.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Life After Baseball
There’s this little spot in Hollywood where you can get yourself arguably just about the best burger in town. It’s too trendy for its own good, but how can you fault it, the burger almost necessitates it. There’s a lot that goes in to the perfect burger, but top among those is the ability to choose its contents – the cheese from a list of cheeses, sauces from a list of such, veggie or turkey or beef, veggies and fried eggs and bacon and more. You can never go in there and order the same burger based on the multitude of choice. But I do. Always do I order the same burger – with the same sauce and cheese and additions. It’s far more expensive than any one burger ought to be, but when you take the first bite, it’s obvious why you’ve overpaid.
It’s an amazing hamburger.
Three quarters of the way through the experience, total joy dissipates, and a newer feeling emerges: post patty depression. Sure that I never (although I live only 3 miles from the restaurant) will have a hamburger ever again that tastes as good as that one. I try to make that last quarter last. Like a running back who is trying for the winning game point. If a bit of lettuce drops, I swoop it up, and make sure to eat it. I tuck back in the bacon so it makes a perfect bite. I chew slowly, and I focus very intently on nothing but the now moment. The crowd and clutter, friends and Hollywood fade away, and there’s nothing but me and the now and the last bite I take of that burger. It was delicious, and now it’s over.
Sadness takes its place on my now empty plate and I sigh with mixed feelings of joy and loss. A pound gained, a burger lost.
I’ll snap out of it, most often with the help of liquor and spirits, and come to realize I will eat there again; I will eat a delicious hamburger once more.
Not unlike post patty depression, I mourn the end of Dodger baseball 08. What is there for me now? The warm summer nights give way to the brutal Los Angeles 78-degree winter, an election will give way to thanksgiving, birthdays and vacations, and work, and life will go on, I suppose.
I saw cheap tickets on the internet Wednesday morning and I thought about snagging one and going to game 5. Certain at the start of the LCS, as every sportscaster, sports writer, and sports professional, I too thought the Dodgers would split in Philly, take 2 out of 3 in LA and return the LCS for a decisive two games where they would most certainly clinch the pennant for a chance at the world series title. I would suppose the magic of sports is that it’s never written the way you would write it. Philly was a stronger team, with stronger pitching, and a stronger bullpen, and I ultimately didn’t snag that last minute ticket, because if by chance we couldn’t push the series to Philadelphia I’d have to watch Philly celebrating on our perfectly groomed field, and I’d see the end of a really, quite wonderful season that's better left in it's pristineness in my own imagination.
I went to the gym for innings one through three, one because moving helps, and I could skim the debate happening at the same time on a TV right next to it. After 30 minutes and 3 errors in one inning by an errorless Rafael Furcal, several verbal profane outbursts, I got off and went upstairs for yoga. Yoga gave way to boot camp class, and 2 ½ hours at the gym later all in an effort to avoid the end of the season, I had to read by text message what I didn’t need a blackberry to tell me: Game Over.
Season Over.
Just six long chilly months of doing other things to pass the time.
That last game was difficult, if not impossible to watch because it was a lot like the feeling I have as I finish that burger. But I’ll always come around to accept the obvious, I will eat a delicious burger again, and baseball in LA will be back, in no time at all.
It’s an amazing hamburger.
Three quarters of the way through the experience, total joy dissipates, and a newer feeling emerges: post patty depression. Sure that I never (although I live only 3 miles from the restaurant) will have a hamburger ever again that tastes as good as that one. I try to make that last quarter last. Like a running back who is trying for the winning game point. If a bit of lettuce drops, I swoop it up, and make sure to eat it. I tuck back in the bacon so it makes a perfect bite. I chew slowly, and I focus very intently on nothing but the now moment. The crowd and clutter, friends and Hollywood fade away, and there’s nothing but me and the now and the last bite I take of that burger. It was delicious, and now it’s over.
Sadness takes its place on my now empty plate and I sigh with mixed feelings of joy and loss. A pound gained, a burger lost.
I’ll snap out of it, most often with the help of liquor and spirits, and come to realize I will eat there again; I will eat a delicious hamburger once more.
Not unlike post patty depression, I mourn the end of Dodger baseball 08. What is there for me now? The warm summer nights give way to the brutal Los Angeles 78-degree winter, an election will give way to thanksgiving, birthdays and vacations, and work, and life will go on, I suppose.
I saw cheap tickets on the internet Wednesday morning and I thought about snagging one and going to game 5. Certain at the start of the LCS, as every sportscaster, sports writer, and sports professional, I too thought the Dodgers would split in Philly, take 2 out of 3 in LA and return the LCS for a decisive two games where they would most certainly clinch the pennant for a chance at the world series title. I would suppose the magic of sports is that it’s never written the way you would write it. Philly was a stronger team, with stronger pitching, and a stronger bullpen, and I ultimately didn’t snag that last minute ticket, because if by chance we couldn’t push the series to Philadelphia I’d have to watch Philly celebrating on our perfectly groomed field, and I’d see the end of a really, quite wonderful season that's better left in it's pristineness in my own imagination.
I went to the gym for innings one through three, one because moving helps, and I could skim the debate happening at the same time on a TV right next to it. After 30 minutes and 3 errors in one inning by an errorless Rafael Furcal, several verbal profane outbursts, I got off and went upstairs for yoga. Yoga gave way to boot camp class, and 2 ½ hours at the gym later all in an effort to avoid the end of the season, I had to read by text message what I didn’t need a blackberry to tell me: Game Over.
Season Over.
Just six long chilly months of doing other things to pass the time.
That last game was difficult, if not impossible to watch because it was a lot like the feeling I have as I finish that burger. But I’ll always come around to accept the obvious, I will eat a delicious burger again, and baseball in LA will be back, in no time at all.
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