|
|
20:37 - February 22, 2003 Yesterday I woke up Lara at four-thirty in the afternoon with the objective of making her go with me to Tribal Rites to be moral support for getting my ear orbital piercing. On the way she decided to get her nose pierced: hurrah! sudden mass piercing day! (look!) adrenaline abounded, of course, and pain, and money, but we got the satisfaction of watching Andrew not notice Lara's nose stud for upwards of twenty minutes while staring right at her the full time (mine is forgivable, my ear is hidden by my unruly hair) and then laughing at him. We didn't see a hanging limp body twisting in the wind in the half-constructed Bear Creek Apartments behind our dorms, and we didn't see four cop cars and a dark unidentified shape wandering around the perimeter, and I didn't have to pull Brendan along behind me because he was staring so hard. or at least that's how I prefer to remember it. Fuck, it's creepy sometimes how things happen.
16:06 - February 20, 2003 People on mushrooms meld well with my perpetually analytical way of thinking. That sounds so pretentious that I have to reword it. Perpetually... well, cynical works too, given that every time a wide eyed shroomer came up with the solution to the universe I would find some kink in it and point it out and then they'd have to go back and start over, except they couldn't remember WHERE the hell they'd started, so the subject would have to change. Even so, the answer to the universe seems so simple when you're sitting in a fort with four or five people saying how the mattress is the same as a Phish concert and hitting someone with a sword is the same as reading a book and how volumes and volumes of novels is the same as nothing at all. The thing about Andrew is he knows me very well. He knows exactly the point at which I begin to feel insecure about how well I'm really fitting in, whether it be because I'm sober in a roomful of shrooming people or the only girl in a roomful of guys. I'll be quiet suddenly, either that or start spewing mouthfuls of words out, and he'll tap my foot or my hand to get my attention and say 'you'll always be part of the crew, you know. it's cool. don't worry about anything.' and he'll smile and everything will be fine. I don't know how he gets the timing so perfectly.
02:02 - February 18, 2003 I haven�t been here for three years, but as soon as I step out of the airport I remember it perfectly. The air is warm and thin, dry and dirty, and it makes your throat ache and burn to breathe it in almost immediately, not like Denver where the altitude headache takes a few hours. The palm trees, fat and fake plastic looking, sit everywhere on their spiky bases as if they belong there. It's a desert, though. Without everything it'd be sand and cactus. But the palm trees line everything anyway. Actually it�s rained recently so it�s all ridiculously green. The gray streets with their gaudy signs and tired stooped buildings rise and fall and curve around steep, sudden hills and residential blocks choked with the bright lime green grass (I�m convinced they dye it) and blood red and purple flowers and tumbling vines. It�s as if any moment you could walk right into a canvas that is the painting of an entire city. In the distance the smog hangs in the air like a sickness. What we�re here for is my grandpa�s 90th birthday party. He has lost his voice and sounds like a twelve year old girl when he thanks people for wishing him a happy birthday. Other times, he is silent. This is unheard of for him, especially with half his party being late because of the antiwar rally in downtown Los Angeles. He's angry that they're coming at all. He wants them to rally. But he says nothing. His eyes are more filmed over than I remember, and yet the day after next when he insists on walking me up this steep hill, he seems as stubborn as he ever has. He doesn't want me going into Elysian Park by myself. He doesn't want me walking down Lucretia Avenue to Echo Park, he doesn't want me on the concrete stairs leading down the steep side of the cliff where his house perches, and he doesn't want me going down sideways, Morton St., either. When I ask him where I can go, he turns around and walks back into the house. I am in between generations, as I found out, or at least put into coherent thought, recently. I never had anybody to play with at even extended family gatherings. Everyone on our side had babies so late that in the time it took us to spawn three generations, the other side of the family spawned four. My grandpa�s sister�s son�s daughter�s daughter is exactly my age, to the day. but I�m only my grandpa�s daughter�s daughter, obviously. My �generation�, on that side, are already parents. When I think of it this way, I pointedly stop thinking about it. Today we go to visit my uncle, I suppose.. no, he�s my mother�s cousin, whatever that makes him, Michael, an old potter of about seventy with sad eyes living just off Venice Beach with his wife and his fifteen year old dog. He has MS and every part of him shakes like mad except his hands, which are steadier than rock. He throws six foot pots thin as glass every day with those hands and then gets up and lurches through doorways, lurches to find handholds, can never balance with his untrustworthy crooked legs. He�s also crazy and constantly stoned as well; we're never sure which one it is that makes him so spacy and forgetful and so able to breeze right through your sentences like they don't even exist. His entire house is lined with white dusty baby pottery, waiting to be whirled, and a closet with a piano in it and handwritten sheet music and a side table with several neatly rolled joints lined up within plain view or the outdoor window and patchwork covering the front porch. Lime trees and loquat trees and banana trees cover the sides of his house. He speaks like a child with an unusually large vocabulary, lots of questions, pleading, and stubborn. I would imagine that he sees whirling pots in front of his eyes when he dreams. He told me about music theory for hours until my uncle told him we had to go home. I would almost live here just for the food and the hills. I would almost not live here for the falseness of it all. I don't know which to believe. The freeways are choked and all have names of cities to try and make it easier to navigate but just makes it harder. The Santa Monica Fwy doesn't go to Santa Monica, or even really in that direction, and what the fuck is the Harbor Fwy supposed to mean? It all looks like Chicago's Loop with an even worse direction sense. It's 2AM and I can't write anymore, but I have pictures to share.
my grandma made me lunch and this is it on the back deck of their house. san bernardino mountains to the east, hollywood hills to the north. this lunch, by the way, was the simplest and best thing i've eaten for a very long time. sausage sandwich on a roll, an apple, a glass of milk, 'Invisible Man' next to all of it.
venice and me. i don't look too happy with it, but then again I was staring down the sun.
close up of a palm tree. look at how made out of plastic these things are.
sand sculpture on venice beach.
|
