LA, the weird and the wonderful

A creepy display at a manicure joint on Melrose, Technicolor graffiti, classic mid-century signage, a thrift shop's guardian spirits... as well as the flowers, the palm trees, and my little cottage in the woods of West Hollywood - here are a few glimpses of Los Angeles from last week.

eating los angeles

Well, it was a wonderful trip. LA really rolled out the red carpet: gorgeous weather, amazing food, more wine than you could shake a stick at, an ongoing conversation about which madly expensive perfume I should buy from Scent Bar / Lucky Scent, and plenty of that helpless laughter I wrote about previously.

Once I get a sense of what 2010 is going to bring, work-wise, I may very well look at making the cross-country move for the third time.



Meanwhile, let me relive some of the food highlights:

- the sweetest uni at Hama Sushi
- pizza with oregano and salami at Pizzeria Mozza
- tacos with potatoes and rajas at Loteria
- escarole salad with almonds and sunchokes at Gjelina
- toasted sourdough bread from La Brea Bakery
- olive oil gelato and butterscotch pudding at Pizzeria Mozza
- spinach and goat cheese omelet at King’s Road
- chocolate-covered dried apricots and tamari-wasabi almonds from Erewhon
- honey-marinated hanger steak and pumpkin cupcakes at Joan’s on Third
- hamachi sashimi with XO sauce at Hungry Cat
- my final meal:scrambled eggs, sausage, homemade english muffin, potatoes, and black tea at bld



- and, best of all, Thomas’s lovely brunch: spinach salad with bacon, tarragon, chervil, and mustard vinaigrette; chicken with mushroom cream sauce and asparagus; a La Brea bakery baguette and fig-anise bread; and cookies with fresh berries. And several bottles of Champagne that I picked up from a store with an unbelievable selection of boutique wines, and an unbelievably rude proprietor. (When I asked if he thought I’d made good choices from his Champagne selection, he said, “I chose them first.” When I asked, “Well then, did I do a good job narrowing down to three bottles?” he said, “At that price point, yes.” Thanks, pal.)

funhouse

I lived in Los Angeles for eight years, after college. Those were significant years, I realize now: being on my own for the first time, and setting up my own life, and taking care of myself, in a place so utterly different from where I’d lived till then (New England, for god’s sake), and which I felt I made my own.

Of course, during those years, I itched to get back east, to live in New York, to be in a quote-unquote real city, to be around people who were quick and on a mission, who hustled.

Fast-forward a decade or so. I’ve been in New York (and environs) for a good long time now, and it just doesn’t feel quite right, somehow. I mean, I love it and all, but you know, I hate it.

It’s a completely schizophrenic relationship, with dramatic, turn-on-a-dime emotions. For instance, I’ll be walking down the street, think, "I'd like a pack of gum," and presto: a deli. There’s always a deli! I love that! Yay, New York!



And then my pack of gum and I will trudge down into the subway and wait and wait and wait for the train, with no announcements to let us know when/if the train will arrive, and when it does arrive, the wheels scrape along the rails like the world’s fiercest nails-on-a-chalkboard, and the train is so stuffed that it takes an eon for a few bedraggled souls to squirm their way out, and somehow the space they took up is absorbed by the remaining riders, so there’s no room for us. The doors close on a packed mass of people, quashing everyone so tightly together that if you could remove the roof of the train, you could pull out a solid loaf of humanness. The train leaves, my gum and I are left behind on the platform, and the whole farce plays over again.

Boo, New York. Boo.

I’m in Los Angeles now for a week — for the first time in years — and so far, it feels frickin’ great. I’ve had piles of delicious salads for lunch, and an incredible wine-soaked dinner at Pizzeria Mozza (so now LA has amazing pizza — another check in the plus column). I've settled into Thom's adorable cottage, which is right in the middle of the city and yet is so quiet (except for the crickets), and is surrounded by a lovely garden that makes me feel as if I'm a million miles from civilization.



I've laughed for hours at the most ridiculous things with the boys (wow, I really needed a few sessions of helpless laughing, after the week I’ve had), and last night had fantastic tacos at Loteria after cocktails in Thom's swank digs, and am now blogging away in a cafe on Melrose (that's another plus: there are available seats in the cafes, so I can settle in for a couple hours of Earl Grey and free wifi; however, a big minus is the parade of bozos in track pants and skate shoes, and bimbos in leggings and boots, all endlessly braying into their phones).

There might not be a deli on every corner (or a theater district, or City Ballet), but CVS sells Dom Perignon*, and I’ll be hitting Hama Sushi tomorrow, and getting pumpkin gelato in Silverlake, and there’s an entire store of Heath pottery just a few blocks from Thom's house, along with a shop that sells dead-stock vintage shoes (hold me back!), and my perfume source, which I've ordered from for a few years and now will finally visit in person.



I know, I know: it’s vacation, of course it’s fun, of course I’m relaxed and laughing and so forth. On the other hand: it's fun! Why question it. And right now, fun is a priority. I want to be with fun people, drinking Champagne from CVS and laughing loud enough to piss off the people at the next table, and feeling like we can’t talk fast enough, there’s so much to say. That’s a life I could embrace.

At the very least, I need to be here more than one week every couple of years.



*Alex and I in CVS, scanning the aisles: “Hair color, indigestion, external pain…” “External pain? What about existential pain?” “Look: external pain, existential pain,... Champagne!”

bird’s-eye view

The real voyage of discovery consists not only in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.
—Marcel Proust

Don’t know about the new eyes, Marcel, but man do I want to hit the road again and see some of those new landscapes.* I want to take my new (to me) car for a cross-country solo spin, I want to head back to Mexico for a couple months of easy living, I want to take intensive French lessons on the Riviera for four weeks to be followed by at least two weeks of practicing my new-found fluency (one hopes) in glamorous-sounding spots like Cap Ferrat and Antibes and Nice… oh, and in Marseilles, which just makes me think of cauldrons of bouillabaisse. Then there’s New Zealand, and Barcelona, and Buenos Aires, and Bali… all places I’m dying to visit and where I’d want to stay for a good chunk of time.

What’s stopping me? Well, let’s see. I’m working, for one thing, which, at this point in history, is not something to be taken lightly. I’ve got contracts and clients — and cash coming in — and my own L(ucky) L(ittle) C(ompany). It feels like it took a long time to get to this point, so I’m not sure it’s wise to disappear for a few months and then perhaps have to start from scratch.

And if I it looks like those contracts are going to be renewed, well, then, I just need to build some vacation / sabbatical time

However, my contracts expire at the end of the year, and though it looks like there could be more work in 2010, nothing is set in stone. My clients could very well decide that they’ve got nothing for me for the time being — at which point, I’m hitting expedia.com and finding me a ticket to points unknown.

into the year. That’s one of the joys of the self-employed way of life: I may not get paid vacation, but my boss tends to cheerfully approve all requests for time off.

To sum up: I’m a lucky duck, and 2010 could be another great chapter in my post 9-to-5 life. So why do I feel a panicky dread creeping up in me? It seems to hit when I feel like I’ve got nothing to look ahead to (cf. here and here and here), creating an opening for all those big Life Decisions to come on over and start tapping me on the shoulder (and/or clocking me upside the head). You know, the big ones: what do I want to do with my life, where do I want to live, who do I want to be, WTF is wrong with me?!

Nice, efficient downward spiral there, if I say so myself. I really have mastered that move in the past few years. Practice, practice, practice!

But I’ve also been practicing a few other tricks: namely, how to put the brakes on the spiral. For one thing, I don’t get automatically sucked into comparing my lot with that of a friend’s, or a colleague’s, or that of someone I read about in my dreaded alumni magazine or even just notice on the subway, for god’s sake. Instead, I’m trying to keep in mind something a friend told me a few years back, when he was helping me figure out how to pull my act together and get un-stuck from my unhappy work situation: Don’t compare yourself to other people; compare yourself to your own potential.**


When I size myself up in relation to friends or subway strangers, I get overwhelmed by a wave of defeat, of my failures and missteps and so forth. When I’m instead able to follow my friend’s advice and think about what my potential may be and how I can live up to it, I find myself wanting to be true to that potential, to care for it, and, actually, honor it (it’s mine, after all), and, by extension, to be true to myself. (Sounds New Agey, I know, but it feels very strong and calm, somehow.)

What that means, more and more, is that I need to write, and take pictures, and have my own projects, not just those of my clients. I need to be okay with not knowing where I’m going or what’s in store, and trust that it will all continue to unfold.

And right now, since the void of an empty calendar seems to freak me out, I’m thinking of the first few months of 2010 as either work work work, or France France France. Voila. Calendar full.



*Full disclosure: As I write this, I’m on a plane, crossing the country (hence the photos), but it’s only for a week-long trip, which is not what I’m talking about here.

**Hindu proverb: There is nothing noble about being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.

course correction

My friends, I've been a bad, bad blogger, and I apologize, and I thank those of you who have prodded me, virtually and actually, to get back at it. I have two reasons for my disappearance (other than sheer procrastination). The first is a doozy: I've been working! Yes, working — me, the supposedly free-spirited, on-the-road, devil-may-care, ne'er-do-well slacker dropout. All of a sudden, I have a ton of work, thanks to a couple of projects that are big enough and long-term enough for me to go ahead and set up my very own LLC (which I’m hoping stands for Lucky Little Company). You can't believe the paperwork and filing fees and legal advice and accountants involved in setting up even a one-person consultancy (one might think that in this economic climate, the powers-that-be would be encouraging those of us trying to leave the rolls of the unemployed, but one would be wrong; in fact, Connecticut just literally doubled all of its business-related fees), but I think I’m through the thick of it, and my projects seem to be under control, so I can pay some long-overdue attention to my blog.

My current work situation has quite a few strange characteristics. First and most astonishing: everyone (I mean everyone) I work with is smart, and I like them all. Now that's a brand-new experience for me, and one that I don't take lightly, believe me, after my dealings with some of the less-than-bright, deeply unlikeable types who lurk in every workplace. Another new one for me is that very little of the work requires me to be in an office, or to be somewhere at a certain time, or to tiptoe around the various landmines of office life.

I love the flexibility and freedom that I have, and how much more sense it all makes, from a pure productivity standpoint. I can be that prototypical freelancer, working in my PJs, setting my own hours, taking a break when I need to rather than watching the clock. If I’m tired, I don’t have to struggle to keep my eyes open until 5 and then stagger home and collapse. If I hit a wall, I can take a nap or go for a walk, and then return to my desk in a more productive state of mind. And I don’t crave solitude the way that I did after a day of dysfunctional office dynamics, when I sometimes felt I was just counting the minutes until I could retreat to my beloved apartment and shut the door on the world. Now, a lot of the work is solitary, so I don't feel the need to retreat during my non-work hours. Plus I have that nice feeling of ownership: these are my projects, my clients, my company, my headaches. What a difference all that makes.






















However. When I originally conceived this post, it was going to be purely about the joys of work, how I feel motivated and reinvigorated, how I find it so odd that people say, “Don’t work too hard” when clearly I’m enjoying working hard, how I’m just soaking up the positive feedback, how helpful it's been for my confidence and sense of possibility (and my bank account). I like the collaboration, the learning, and the fact that I don't have to feel guilty about having zilch interest in finding a full-time job.

However. My blog now appears to act as a conscience for me, and as I thought through the post and what I wanted to say, I had to acknowledge the nagging voice in my head, the same one that I ignored for years but that finally drove me to extricate myself from my unhappy and stressful situation last spring. It’s the voice that reminds me that I want something more from my life — something that remains rather vague, but that isn’t going to just happen on its own.

In some ways (and this is Reason Number Two for my blogging delinquency), I think my mini-break from the blog over the past few weeks was a break from seriously paying attention to my life — to its content, its direction, and its potential - so that I could hunker down and focus on the (paying) work on hand, so that my big question of the day could simply be, "What do I need to get done today?" Now I'm again trying to look at my life in a more comprehensive way, and I've been thinking about what I've learned and how I've felt over the past couple of months. I have a few "key takeaways," as we say in the consulting game: (1) I do want a home of my own once again, and I want it to be nice; (2) freelancing is a good setup for me right now, with the benefits (income with relative independence) far, far outweighing the demerits (like, say, expensive and crappy health insurance, and lots of deadlines, and responsibility); (3) setting up my own company is an incredible and rewarding feeling; and (4) — and this is the most important — I need something bigger, some larger project or purpose, something creative and ambitious and soul-fulfilling. (I have a couple of thoughts about what this something could be, but I don't feel quite ready to share.)

So right now, I need to make sure I don't get pulled back into a life that isn't ultimately fulfilling for me. And there are so many ways that I can get sucked back in: I have a meeting with a successful, high-paid woman with a lot of responsibility and a swish office and think, “I should do this!”; or I pay a visit to a friend with an enviable apartment in the Village; or I think longingly of all my stuff, now stashed in some mysterious storage unit in the Bronx, and how lovely it would be to set up house again, and maybe I should check out the real estate listings, and oh I could have a cat again.... But I’m terrified of ending up where I was a year and a half ago, freaking out at the stack of bills, working too much, feeling like I’m permanently stuck, generally just fretting.

To be honest, over the past two months I’ve questioned the purpose of my blog. I loved it initially, when I was just back from my Paris interlude and really thinking through my "vision quest" and looking at the big questions of my life. It helped me stay in my uncomfortable in-between stage (in between jobs, homes, routines) rather than jumping into something that would have initially felt more secure, but wouldn't be right in the long run. But recently I'd been wondering if the blog had run its course, if there was anything I could say that would mean anything to anyone but me. However, I realize now that the purpose of the blog is to keep me on my toes, that it's a way for me to push myself to keep questioning what I'm doing and where I'm going, and to keep tabs on my journey. It’s all about me, in other words, but I do truly hope that at least some of it is of interest and help to you, since without you, I wouldn’t have figured any of this out.

adult supervision

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
- Samuel Johnson

Wow, I've been a bad blogger this month. There are some good reasons for this, which I'll cover in another post, but for now, I'll just apologize (sorry!) and get on with it.

I fear this post is going to be a personal one, folks, and a bit terrifying for someone of my retiring disposition. But as much as I'm tempted to just skip it and instead tell you about my lunch at the fab Mexican place in Port Chester today (tacos! amazingly fresh tortillas! and horchata!), I think I need to tackle this.

... Okay, so about 10 minutes have gone by since I wrote those few sentences. I'm feeling kind of self-conscious and exposed. Let's just write it all out, audience be damned, and then see what we've got.

This post is about what the pop psych people call "intimacy issues"; if this topic gives you the shakes or an overwhelming sense of ennui, please feel free to click elsewhere.

To follow up on crybaby: I'm not being such a waterworks any more (though those sappy commercials that feature lovely young people being sweet and attentive to charming and grateful old people always, always get me). In fact, the situation that sparked crybaby has turned out to be what I, if I were prone to these types of phrases, might call a teaching moment.

I haven't had much success with romantic relationships in my life, and I've fouled up a fair share of friendships, too. It's a cliché, I know, but when someone gets close to me - or more to the point, when I get close to someone - all sorts of "Danger, Will Robinson!" flashing lights and waving robot arms start up, and I put on the brakes so hard that I typically pull a Rockford and end up zooming in the opposite direction. (How you like those metaphors?)

Why, you ask? Well, that's the $64,000 question. (Actually, I haven't hit the $64,000 mark on this one yet, but if I continue with the steady stream of checks to my therapist, it could happen.) It's mostly to do with trust, which is a tough one for me, and the lack thereof, and a lifelong sense that all it takes is one little mistake on my part (or one moment where I slip and show you my real self), and I'm off your list. So instead of sticking around in a relationship and trying to make sure I don't make any mistakes, which is of course impossible, I head for the door myself. Or I perversely create a minefield of self-fulfilling prophecies - finding all sorts of ways to test this poor man, hold him up to impossible standards, criticize him when he fails, until he is at his wit's end and declares, "This isn't working!" Which of course, I knew all along.

Nothing gets my defenses up like the feeling that I'm being rejected, and it's a feeling that can be triggered all too easily, by a prick to the ego, a broken date, a disappointment, a frustration that he couldn't read my mind and know exactly what I needed, even when I was saying that I didn't want it. It's crazy-making, for me, for him, for anyone who gets sucked into my insane parallel universe. At moments like this, I can go from sweetness and affection to utter rage and scorn in no time flat. The interior monologue goes something like this: "I can't believe he did that. This is ridiculous - this person is not for me, this is all wrong, why are we bothering when we can't even get along, enough already, done."

Sadly, once it starts up, the interior monologue is tough to shut down. It gathers momentum, drowning out all vestiges of rational thought, precluding honest conversation and openness. The moment - and the relationship - becomes completely about my being in control: I'm the one who sees all the problems, and who never relents or opens up or shares anything that might weaken my position of power. When I look back at times like this, it's as if I had been possessed by a demon, and my own feelings and judgments and self were utterly erased.

You wouldn't believe how difficult it is for me to try to break these patterns. For instance, when I'm being just a nightmare to someone, cold and critical and distant, and I manage to recognize that I'm doing this and that it's not the ideal course of events, I'll tell myself that I need to start a conversation about what's going on with me, get it out in the open. So there I am, in my head, trying to encourage myself to open up and stop punishing and perhaps even apologize, and it feels terrifying, as if I'm giving away the farm. It's like the crazy girl in the movies who ends up crumpled on the floor, screaming and crying and scuttling herself into a corner, where she huddles and screams some more, terrified that the nice man in the white jacket is going to take away her blankie, or whatever. That's what's living in my head, refusing to budge an inch, refusing to calm down, refusing to listen. Sometimes I can talk her down, sometimes not.

Later, when the crazy blankie girl has gone away for a rest, it feels nigh impossible to acknowledge my behavior, and to apologize. Remember how the Fonz just couldn't bring himself to say he was sorry? He'd stammer and stutter and look as if he was trying to cough up a hairball, but he just could not apologize - in his world, it was impossible that he was ever wrong. I can relate. Trying to explain myself, to account for and apologize for my bad behavior, can feel impossible, as if there is a physical impediment to speaking, a physical inability to bring forth the words.

Oy. What a mess, right?

Happily, I do feel that I'm making progress in my quest to become a better person. Now that I'm more aware of these mechanisms, I'm trying to dismantle them. I'll spare you the therapy-speak, for the most part, not because I don't believe in it, but because it just don't travel well, do it? I'll just say this: My monologue is more of an interior dialogue these days, as I try to talk myself down from this tautly strung state, down to something more human and less frightened and more willing to be open and present. It is so incredibly difficult to try out unfamiliar behavior such as this - it would be so much more comfortable to stick with the behavior I know so well. But that hasn't exactly worked for me in the past.

In the intro to Psychotherapy Without the Self, his book that attempts to reconcile psychotherapy with Buddhism, Mark Epstein writes the following:

In particular, the British analyst D. W. Winnicott moved therapy from a focus on unacceptable instincts and urges to a focus on the unintelligible aspects of emotional experience. 'We are poor indeed if we are only sane,' he remarked once in a famous footnote. [Love that! -Ed.] Winnicott had the idea that the opposite of integration (the state of an apparently cohesive self) is not disintegration but something he termed unintegration. Here he was moving away from Freud and toward the Buddha. He compared unintegration to what it is like for a child to surrender himself in play, knowing that his mother is in the next room providing what he called 'good-enough ego coverage.' He also compared it to a lover's consciousness 'after intercourse,' when the urges are relaxed and the mind and heart are open, and to an artist's mind when unburdened in the studio. He saw the state of unintegration as the foundation of creativity and wrote volumes about the consequences of failing to tap into it. When a child has to manage an intrusive or ignoring parental environment, Winnicott suggested, he or she is forced to develop a 'false' or 'caretaker' self, centered in the thinking mind, in order to survive. This false self (which can paradoxically seem 'really real') is created at the expense of unintegration, and the capacities for spontaneity, subjectivity, and authenticity are all compromised as a result. Winnicott, in his own way, seemed to be describing something akin to how the Buddhist unconscious could be covered over by early experience.

This whole passage is incredibly powerful to me - to the point where I don't think I feel ready to write about how I believe these concepts relate to me - but perhaps most powerful is the parens about the "false" self, "which can paradoxically seem 'really real'." It's fascinating to me how right the crazy blankie girl can sound, and also fascinating to begin to recognize how I can have a different opinion and perspective and approach from hers, that I can try to figure out why she's so upset, and try to calm her down, and try to get her out of the driver's seat. Revelatory, my friends. It feels kind of like growing up - and about time.

Fabulous "madwoman" button from www.cafepress.com.

crybaby

You know when you're in one of those moods where everything makes you cry? Maybe you're a little tired, or maybe you're weak from the flu, or maybe your heart suffered a blow and you've been crying anyway, so why not cry some more when, say, the winner of the Open falls to the court and starts sobbing after match point? Or when Beyoncé proves herself to be a class act above and beyond what anyone ever expected at an MTV event? Or when a ridiculously corny song comes on the radio and just seems to exactly and unbearably sum up your experience? (My classic example of this is when I was on vacation in Hawaii with Thom and Alex, right after Thom had suffered a devastating breakup. The three of us are sitting at a picnic table, eating shave ice, when a Gloria Estefan song comes over the loudspeaker. The first verse isn't even over, and Thom is already up and hurrying away, clearly sobbing. Alex and I look at each other and say, simultaneously, "Gloria Estefan? Really?" That was the clue that led us to realize what bad shape Thom was in. As Amanda says in Private Lives, "Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.")

For me, today's waterworks instigator was coming across this passage from The Little Prince, a book that, like The Velveteen Rabbit, can make me cry even when there's not a copy within a mile; all I have to do is picture the fox, asking the Prince to tame him... or the poor rabbit, ashamed that he has no hind legs like the real rabbits... oh oh oh!

A-nee-way, here's the passage:

And he confided further, "In those days, I didn't understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contradictory! But I was too young to know how to love her."

There are many ways in which this quote from The Little Prince does not at all parallel my situation (for instance, I am not a rose), but when one is weepy, a shortage of parallels is no hurdle to complete identification with another's sadness, especially if this sadness is in one of the great tear-jerker books of all time.

If you're a reasonably good between-the-lines reader, perhaps you can make a rough guess as to the source of my current weepy state. Yes, dear reader, I have a bit of a heartache. I may driven someone away with my "silly pretensions," and I may have lost a chance at what could have been a good thing.

This would normally be the part of the essay where I would try to come up with some wanderings on this subject, accompanied by some interesting and insightful gleanings, perhaps a bit of profundity on the nature of love and loss, along with maybe a funny line or anecdote, and then wrap everything up in a brilliantly deft maneuver that would pack an emotional wallop (note that I said "try to come up with"). Nothing is presenting itself at the moment.

It's tough to think up something original to say about romantic disappointment. After all, it's been covered, oh, here and there, over the years, with various heroines pitching themselves in front of trains or off of towers, a double suicide in iambic pentameter, a hero running through the desert to try to get help for his beloved, who he left in a cave after the plane crash, but then the British soldiers thought he was a spy and dragged him off in chains, and then he jumped off the train and commandeered a plane to get back to the cave, but it was too late... {*sob*}

So, really, what is there left to say about heartache? Basically, it hurts like mad, you try to get through the worst of it as best you can, you try to take something from it that will help you on your journey, and hopefully, you don't let it scar too badly. Because apparently, we need to keep trying, for reasons the Little Prince's fox can express much more eloquently than I:

"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."