Welcome home

I spent my birthday week in the glamorously smog-filled hometown of my birth. And I got the nastiest head cold of my life. Ironically, the NyQuil afforded me some of the best sleep I've had in months. That and sleeping under the same roof as my parents.

We had a brunch for my birthday, brilliantly orchestrated by my mother. I invited some of the girls that I was close with in high-school. It was a nice re-introduction to Los Angeles. And I have to say LA greeted me with warm, open arms. And so did my old girlfriends. Even though some of us have barely seen each other over the last (gulp) 17 years, they confidently arrived bearing thoughtful gifts, exchanged pleasantries with my family as if no time at all had passed, and took up the conversation where we last left off.

You see, to me LA is overwhelmingly associated with my adolescence. And in order to move back here, I would need to engage with it as an adult. Same with my friends, my family. And I find that very hard to do. Every street I drive down, every photo in the album, brings me back to that time when we are most fully alive in the experiential sense, least concerned with the consequences of our actions, and busy tearing down boundaries to remake dangerous and exciting lives.

It didn't help that my friend Kathy gave me the young adult book, What My Mother Doesn't Know and that I devoured it in a day.

I am terrified of leaving the adult life I have successfully built for myself behind. I am scared of the old habits I might return to were I to move back. But mostly, I am feeling more and more ready every day.

Safe

For some reason I have been thing about that Todd Haynes movie, Safe. For many years I thought that movie was pretty much flawless. It's such a subtle movie and Julianne Moore the perfect subtle actress to deliver the performance of a hysterical middle class woman. The plot moves so slow, like the Charles Ray still life, Tabletop, it's almost imperceptible. Yet, at the same time, it is tricky. We are pushed along until the end of the film, when the housewife, Carol, as played by Julianne Moore, has completely removed herself from society, her family, and all the expected responsibilities of being a mom, a wife, and having an upper class pedigree.



One of my favorite scenes is in the beginning. She has this expansive white living room and has just ordered couches. But when the couches are delivered they come in stark black instead of white. It's the first sign that something is about to crack in her comfortable life. At first, when she becomes ill from all the environmental toxins around her: the couch, the cleaners, the hair products, the pollution, one empathizes with her. Yes, our lives are so full of bad shit over which we have little control; this can't be healthy for us! But then she becomes more fragile to the elements, more extreme in protecting herself from modernity, and eventually bows out completely. She cannot partake of modern civilization without becoming ill and to remove herself completely from those poisons, she must basically seal herself in a bubble. Which, in many ways was where she started in the beginning: safely ensconced in her suburban middle class life.

When I watch it, I just think how perfectly executed it is. There is even one of those Shining moments when the camera is dollying out on the character and zooming in at the same time. It's a super long take of Carol and once again, you can barely tell it's happening. But it successfully conveys that warbly feeling. The whole film is like a long unraveling and you have no idea where Haynes is taking you. I studied that film over and over in film school and always saw something new in it. Which reminds me there are a few more recent Todd Haynes' films I haven't even seen yet.

Don't Go Breaking My Heart

I recently had the pleasure of watching The Muppets with a young toddler. We both enjoyed it very much and clapped after every song. The episode featured a young Elton John and a slightly unsettling duet with Miss Piggy who kept kissing his exposed chest hair. Both Elton and The Muppets brought back a flood of memories. In no particular order:

A. I once babysat a kid all summer whose mother instructed me, "And then he will want to watch The Great Muppet Caper two times in a row." And indeed, for 3 months, the child watched that movie twice every day I came over. Oddly enough, I tuned it out completely and don't remember much of it at all.

B. My sisters and I used to choreograph dance moves to our parents records. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was one of our favorites because it had so many hits and much melodrama. Candle in The Wind had us lying on the ground until the chorus when we would rise at the same time Elton's voice did and dance in circles like fairy nymphs around the apartment.

C. I watched The Muppets every Sunday night. It was THE show I looked forward to most. I remember sitting in front of the TV after a shower and letting my hair air dry and loving all the guest stars. I don't think anything like the flamboyant and tongue-in-cheek duet with Elton John and Miss Piggy would fly on a kid's show today.

D. I know that I already mentioned I sang The Rainbow Connection at my 8th grade graduation.

E. My dad used to squeeze us on that ticklish spot right above the knee and say, "Kermie." My niece recently learned that trick on our last family vacation.

F. We also used to have Muppets of our own. At bedtime, my dad would stand at the foot of the bed and enact each Muppet voice and then throw each one to the prospective child/owner of the Muppet. I had Kermit, although my sister had Animal and I totally coveted hers.

_{Ana Mendieta}
I can't get over the Fall light these days. It's just so bright. The Mudville skies are so blue! I actually saw a flock of geese flying south. Or at least that's what my city imagination leads me to believe. But then again I crave seasons. Just so it'll all make sense: the days shortening, the back-to-school lunchboxes, the Halloween masks in the store.

I used to work in a flower shop on Telegraph Avenue in college. I often wore overalls and mittens with the fingers cut out. There were only two walls to the shop so it was really more of a flower stand. I stood by a tiny space heater that could either warm my fingers or my toes. Every morning I changed the water for every bucket of flowers. On some mornings the water was frozen. Three times a week, we got fresh flowers and my fingers grew raw from dethorning the roses.

I was a snob. Carnations and baby's breath were the worst. Anyone who wanted roses with baby's breath or a single carnation, I thought was utterly lame. I hated Valentine's Day.

I befriended a lot of the avenue's riff raff. I gave them flowers too close to dying to sell. But still they were flowers. There were always petals falling out of my clothes. When I came home I smelled of the most pungent flowers: the gardenias, the tuberroses, the stargazer lilies.

I read. I talked on the phone. I flirted with the boys at the bookstore.
I begged my friends to come by and visit. Each morning, I watched the street wake up. And each night, I took home flowers and flowers.

_{Joan Brown, Girl Sitting, 1962}

When I was a kid my sister and I used to play this game with a globe. We would close our eyes and spin the globe and the other would yell "stop." Wherever our finger landed was where we were going to end up living one day. The best places were the ones hardest to pronounce, surrounded by the most water, and the farthest away from where we were at that time located. We played similar games with my mother's magazines, this is who your husband will be, this is what your kids will turn out to look like; there were endless variations. The point was the possibilities were limitless.

As I think about moving away from Mudville and moving towards a different future, I have a hard time believing in those same kind of possibilities. I am turning 35 in a matter of weeks. I will be half of 70. Both round, plump numbers. Both ripe and solid.

Everyone tells me the world resounds with opportunities, choices, miracles even. And I keep trying. Try to keep my eyes open. Try to not anticipate the answers. Try to stop memorizing my lines.

It helps when the leaves start falling and the cement turns orange, yellow, red with their dye. It helps when there is dew on my car every morning and the sun squinting through my dirty windshield.

I can hold my hand up against the sky
and the sky seems very blue
very bright.