full circle

So I was trying to figure out how to erase my myspace profile tonight (still have no idea) because I haven't logged onto it in like 10 months. Of course I get sucked into reading all the stuff and looking at all the photos that were important to me 4 years ago. 2006 was the year I left home, packing up my shit to drive east until I reached the other end. Black and I were setting up shop in Boston. Two people who had been mad in love for years but had never lived in the same city...or country for that matter. High up in a dusty old loft, with the unfamiliar city streets full of brick buildings, steaming potholes, and swooping seagulls; Black and I figured it out. We twisted and fought and laughed and sulked. We sweated out that first winter with our totally uncontrollable 40 foot radiator. It was uncomfortable. He hated my cats. I hated his unending studying. Plenty of people had congratulated us on our ability to maintain a long distance relationship for so long, but now that I look back, I'm more proud that we got through that first 6 months in Boston.

I look back at that time now and smile.

So when I read those old myspace blogs, I feel what it must be like to be a fortune teller.

I can't help but wonder what I'll think of myself 4 years from now when I read this one.

August 2006:

hand on chin eyes wide

i squint beneath shades on every day during the brittle summer sunny of a city that has not seen rain in months. its this time of year that los angeles looses its color. flat light and the dust that seems to layer over everything- leaves, cars, every blade of grass. the horizon, lost in a haze that lies like a blanket over the hills of the san gabriel valley. heavy.

or perhaps it is me, my ennui, my melancholic vision of a place that i both love and want so desperately to leave.

i want to look at my city with the reverence it deserves, as the place that has stamped my very spirit. but im tired. tired of the constant driving, the effort, the stress. i dont want to look at the 101 fwy, or the vast stretches of strip mall, gas station and 7/11 corners that mark the valley like an endless fucking song you cant get out of your head but dont know the words to. i dont even want to look at my favorite colorful corners of chinatown and venice and east l.a.

i just cant be bothered.

so i dream and try to picture a life that is unknown. i close my eyes and think of snow and bricks and strange beaches where you can see the sun rise over the ocean. i think of my lover.

my nostalgia travels to other places- mexico city, memphis, kenucky...all literal- spiritual homes of some sort. maybe the feelings wrapped around leaving my city...MY city is too much to bear.

through the heavy i smile secretly. im going soon. fuckingchangegoddamnit s betterthan death

yearn

LA's heartbreaking beauty after the first rainstorm of fall, when everything is sparkle and crispy new and full of fresh. griffith park hikes after work during summer's butterlight. the sparkle of the pacific just peaking over the horizon as you race along canan dume road. maple street downtown with its spanish speaking arabs, its spanish speaking everyone selling you every variety of damask and stretch velvet and fun fur. the santa monica pier on a warm summer night. the silly aspirations of the masses who come to the magical place where everyone one can be special, get beautiful, be seen, get famous, wait tables, get a dayjob...and then maybe write overly rosey wistful tributes to their hometown. the soaring overpasses of the 110 meets the 105 interchange. my backyard in north hollywood with air exactly the temperature of my skin- the bath of los angeles. taco trucks, hotdogs wrapped in bacon on the street, corn on a stick carts. the sweet-tart spicey delight of a chile mango ziplock walking leisurely around echo park lake. the heat emanating off the street in waves, hinting at pools of water that cannot possibly exist on santa monica blvd in mid-july. thai food and sushi and vietnamese pho treasures tucked secretly in flat colorless mini-malls. brunches every weekend al fresco. sunset junction. burning man exodus. santa ana winds that make you want to run wild and make everything you touch electric. bungalows, dingbats, palm trees. venice beach on a weekday when its just you and that roller skating guitar guy. movies in broadway theater palaces, movies in a cemetery, movies blocking your way to work. the uncanny perseverance of a million immigrants. the uncanny way that los angeles can be the object of so much love and hope and dreaming, with its crowded freeways and smog and crime and homeless, and urban strife and natural disasters. the way my city colors my memories with all the details i love, while all the inconvenient annoyances and ugly bits just fall away.

does everyone dream of home?

Teetering on the Edge of my Decade...

Its Happening.

I am slowly, yet most assuredly approaching my decade. This one happens to be forty. I know what they are saying...."forty is the new [insert whatever not so old sounding thing here]." Whatever. I don't generally have an issue with age. Aside from being self-supporting since my very punctual college graduation a bazillion years ago, I have been largely unable to grow up anyways. As my husband said, "baby, everyone got on the bus but us."

The question remains. What bus will we be catching? Maybe it will be the same bus as all those late pro-creating celebrities. The ones who most famously had crap-tons of fun through their 20's and 30's, and then miraculously produce angelic twins on their 41st birthday. If I make it on that bus, will they dispense valuable advice on getting rid of the baby weight even before your episiotomy stitches are out? Then again maybe that bus will just make me feel out of place in my Target jeans and Danskos....while my miracle baby gets a complex about his or her Costco deal baby carrier. No doubt, the celeb miracle baby bus will be a character building experience for us all.

I'm not even sure what the other buses have to offer. The "high powered career couple" bus? We wouldn't make it up the front steps. More appealing is the "artsy globetrotting freewheeling couple with fabulously creative ways to make gads of money" bus. That bus, however, is like the dodo bird.

So my decade approaches and I wonder what the second half will bring. And I navigate the balance of letting go of what I cannot control, and enjoying to the fullest what I can.