Echoes in a Hollow Space

Every license plate I saw this morning contained a Z. All right, I looked at six and five contained a Z.

You see, I sometimes play a game as I commute to and from work. I make words out of the letters in license plates—only official state license plates count, none of the vanity ones. They also has to be random plates from the road or from cars parked alongside it. The game allows one to scramble the letters in any way that will make a word, with Q and X as optional skips. You can make a word out of them if you wish to try, but no demerits for skipping them, and two points instead of one for using them. Of course, since I’m in the car by myself there really isn’t anyone to keep score or to play against, except some hypothetical opponent who might or might not be me.

I was quite smug yesterday evening when I saw a plate with GQE. It felt like there was a word there but I couldn’t quite suss it out. After I meditated on it for a while, “QUAGMIRE” popped into my brain. That’s when the smugness hit. My hypothetical opponent even gave me kudos.

But Z’s everywhere I looked this morning. I didn’t come up with any good solutions. I couldn’t be arsed to try. I kept thinking that I wouldn’t be moving down these roads, ones I’ve traveled for decades, for much longer. I won’t miss the commute. It’s often brutal these days. But I will miss some of the sights and sounds.

Will I miss the license plate game? There will be other roads and other license plates, although I admit to sometimes playing the game obsessively until I have to force myself to stop or risk my sanity.

Maybe I’ll concentrate on new sights and sounds instead.

"The dragonfly totem carries the wisdom of transformation and adaptability in life. As spirit animal, the dragonfly is connected to the symbolism of change and light. When the dragonfly shows up in your life, it may remind you to bring a bit more lightness and joy into your life. Those who have this animal as totem may be inclined to delve deep into their emotions and shine their true colors."

A cloudy gray day down near the beach, temperatures in the sixties.

At the corner of Pacific and Main a girl with dark hair piled atop her head, in a loose halter top and skintight yoga pants, jogs in place waiting for the light to change. Her boobs bounce boobily. The second the light changes, she shoots across the intersection. A car waiting to make a left turns in front of her. She indignantly pounds on the cab as he passes. He doesn’t notice, keeps on going, and so does she, bouncing across the street while those who had been on the corner with her follow at a more leisurely pace.

Just as the pedestrian light starts to blink red, a ragged man in cammo jacket, shorts, bare feet, and humping a backpack steps into the crosswalk and limps slowly across. About halfway the light changes and he picks up the pace of his limping, waving at those of us in the cars not to run him down. We wait until he makes it to the curb and go on our way.

At the corner of Bay and Main, a portly middle-aged man in T-shirt and shorts strides into the crosswalk from Dogtown Coffee. He balances two large coffees on top of one another, a cigarette stuck between his fingers levitating above their lids.

At Vicente Terrace, a girl hastens purposefully up the street carrying a large yellow plastic bag, three giant poster boards under her arm festooned with lettering and sparkles while Elbow sings, “It’s all gonna be magnificent, she says…”

Just another Thursday morning, ordinary but unique, ephemeral, gone forevermore.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Driving west on Manchester from Crenshaw, I noticed the neon sign for the Love Divine Chapel looked a little worse for wear: dirty, chipped, lacking in light. Neon signs always look a little depressed when they aren’t turned on, but I imagine that even when the giant L-O-V-E shone in the night it would still look dingy. The tiny meeting hall beside the sign needed paint and repair, the revival bus parked in the miniscule lot needed new tires. The homeless man holding up the hand-scrawled cardboard “Need Food” sign didn’t seem to notice the irony of standing beneath dingy love.

Further down Manchester, the planes coming into LAX paralleled the avenue, low and seeming-slow, though I knew they were speeding over the depressed neighborhoods below.

Customers lined up twenty deep at Randy’s Donuts. Even if you’re not from L.A. or have never been here, you’ve probably seen Randy’s Donuts in some montage or other: it’s the gigantic donut sitting on top of the tiny building right off the freeway. A sort of emblem of L.A. in it’s way. The space shuttle parked outside it for awhile, resting on its cross-town journey from LAX to the Museum of Science and Industry.

Randy’s is a kind of demarcation point between the poorer neighborhoods and the gradual swing to upscale as you head west. As the blocks whiz by the prices of rent and purchase gradually rise towards affluent Westchester. My parents bought in when Westchester was still a down at the heels lower middle class neighborhood, but it got “discovered” in the nineties and it’s fully gentrified now. Anything west of Sepulveda Boulevard is pretty pricy.

As I got closer to Sepulveda I saw a giant billboard advertising a place where they freeze fat for cosmetic reasons. I don’t even want to think about that too much. “Fear No Mirror” the billboard declared in far larger letters than the LOVE of the Divine Chapel. I realized we’d moved from the land of Fear No Evil to the land of Vanity of Vanities.

I fear no mirrors, comfortable in my aging skin, even as another birthday approaches. I do fear the fear of mirrors, however.  There is peace in accepting the passage of time, the transformation of the flesh, but we don’t live in an age—and I don’t live in a city—that accepts such peace. Rather the hard lessons of perpetually hard bodies, ever in denial, ever running too fast to stop and listen to the soft words of the soul.  What evils have been wrought in the name of vanity, and continue to be wrought. Yea, verily.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

27 Dec
The guy in the Cadillac Escalade whose license plate included “ASAP” driving at least 10 mph under the speed limit.

30 Dec
I have strep throat. The doc said “I worked in the ER and nothing phases me but THAT’S impressive.” God knows how long I’ve had it.

31 Dec
I’ve been sick as a dog for days but tonight I feel like I may have regained my humanity. Happy new year everyone.

1 Jan
No fever this morning for the first time since Friday. I think I may survive. 

 May you all enjoy a happy and fever free 2013.

1 Jan
Having watched all the Rose Parade I can stand (10 minutes), I will turn my attention elsewhere.

2 Jan
People are the foulest species. I don’t usually watch Animal Cops because I can’t stand the cruelty, stupidity and culpability of some people, but it happened to be on when I turned the TV on and I became transfixed by a story of three horses. Happy endings for two of them, no word on what kind of ending the third experienced. I want to believe the number of good people balances out the bad, but there are days I have my doubts.

2 Jan
In other news, I still feel like crud.

2 Jan
Watching a Dr. Oz diet show while eating KFC: another fine irony.

3 Jan
Profound: doing an oracle reading re: Mom and having her interrupt it with a phone call. If I was a writer I might make something of that.

4 Jan
I felt mostly human today but still tire way too easily.

6 Jan
Who likes mimes except other mimes?

7 Jan
I think “don’t describe eye color” is one of the more bogus writing rules. Someone with a personality disorder must have made that one up. I always notice eye color in Real Life. It’s pertinent in description; eyes are the windows to the soul, etc. Having said all this, I do believe amateurs way the hell overuse eye color as a descriptor, as if it’s the only thing important about a face. It’s one more piece of the puzzle, that’s all, and perhaps that rule was generated by someone’s frustration over too many “he had brown hair and blue eyes” 
flat and lifeless descriptions. More important perhaps to note the pitted quality of his nose, how light never touches those blue eyes.

7 Jan
They’re talking about springing Ma soon from the Big House. She’s been walking real good.

9 Jan
Boycotting Olive Garden, Red Lobster and now Wendy’s: http://bit.ly/ZyYiY5 

10 Jan
Hope seems to be my Rasputin emotion. No matter how many times and ways it is assassinated, it refuses to die.

10 Jan
Mom got cocky, thinking she was going home, and decided to go to the bathroom without help. She lost her balance and “fell.” Although she insists she just “slid down the wall.” No breaks/fractures, thank God. But they want to monitor her another week or so before releasing her. She’s doing well. They took her outside and walked her up and down the block yesterday (assisted). They’re just being cautious.

11 Jan
I’m so old that when I hear the word “butter” I have to fight the urge to say, “Parkay.”

14 Jan
Dear Man on the Cycle: your clownish bicycle clothes just got stupider with the addition of the unitard.

14 Jan
The water in the birdbath froze overnight, a very rare occurrence here near the beach.

14 Jan
It doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t 

mean anything.

Don’t read anything into it, don’t read anything into it, don’t read anything into it, don’t read anything into it, don’t read anything into it.

Remember: hope is the thing without feathers.

14 Jan
Funny the things that stick in your mind: I can’t read/hear “papier maché” without hearing Rowan Atkinson’s voice (from Blackadder Goes Forth) saying, “Pap-ee-yay MASH-ay willie.” (He was mocking the artistic strivings of Hugh Laurie’s upperclass twit character.) That phrase has been rattling around in my brain for years. Sad, really.

15 Jan
Wow. I just forgot my boss’s last name. I had to get up and look at his name plate. That’s rather terrifying.

15 Jan
Stop being a writer and just write.

15 Jan
Conspiracy theory and gun nuts—a terrifying, sick combination: http://yhoo.it/106HIPr 

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

30 Nov
Huh! With everything, I completely forgot about the looming Mayan Apocalypse. I wonder if I’ll even notice?

30 Nov
Mom is being transferred to the rehab center this afternoon. That was fast! Such a bundle of conflicting emotions right now. She’s feeling much better and they’ll give her the help she needs. But I’m still twisted in knots. This isn’t a logical I thing, it’s an emotional one. I’ve been her only caregiver for a long time and have to remind myself I’m not abandoning her but getting help.

2 Dec
God save me from people who think being an artist excuses all manner of bad behavior. Mom’s roommate is an Artiste and the most self-absorbed tyrant to her children and everyone else I’ve met in a long time. They’re talking of moving her Monday. Hallelujah.

3 Dec
There are people who will return your phone calls and others who are never going to be able to do that. You have to let go of expectations.

4 Dec
A horror show in the Marina: http://bit.ly/XDkS1D  It broke my heart to see those gorgeous old trees taken down, some 40 years old or more. I have to drive by the stumps of 50+ cut down trees every morning and evening and I keep imagining them crying out in pain and horror. Sometimes a good imagination is a liability.

4 Dec
Your decision: try to help a man off the tracks before he’s hit by a subway train or take a picture of him as he’s about to get hit? Then sell it to the NY Post, of course. What is wrong with some people?

4 Dec
The physical therapist at the rehab center thinks that with some therapy Mom may be able to get back on her feet. This would be a very good thing.

5 Dec
I hope it’s not an omen of Apocalypse: yesterday while sitting at the gas station a dismembered pigeon wing dropped in front of my car. A crow came along presently to fetch it and fly away.

5 Dec
The girl bicycling in a thigh length beige fake fur coat. (At least, I hope it was fake.)

10 Dec
Just when I thought I could relax a bit, the medical transportation company decided to clusterfu*k my mother’s dialysis appointments. Foolish me. You can never relax in the caregiver biz.

11 Dec
Exhausted, desperate for rest, don’t know when that’s going to happen. And the Christmas carolers are here. The happiest time of the year.

12 Dec
Ironic juxtaposition: Driving to work I followed a rusted, corroded, bondo-enhanced “personal pleasure craft” full of fishing poles being towed by some guy to the Marina del Rey. Just as I wondered if they had life jackets on board that mess NPR announced, “Forty years ago today The Poseidon Adventure premiered in theaters.”

13 Dec
So the fire captain of my local fire house called to say he was meeting with the Chief about my mother’s 911 call that they botched. I have no beef against their house—they’ve helped us many times. But this call was not their finest hour. Glad it’s being addressed. The hospital and Mom’s doctors filed a complaint against them. Still, I appreciate the outreach.

13 Dec
Some bright spark asked at the official timekeeping meeting about the tradition of sending us home early the day before a holiday. No more early exits for us. Don’t ask and we won’t officially tell.

13 Dec
Free-floating anxiety. Tried all day to reach Mom on her cell phone. She had her headphones on and couldn’t hear the phone. I’m exhausted. It makes the imagination a wee bit crazy sometimes. I managed to calm down after I talked to her. I need to take up meditation or something.

14 Dec
Obviously handing out a high-powered weapon to anyone who wants one is a great idea. /bitter irony

17 Dec
On the drive back from visiting Mom at noon I couldn’t take listening to tragedy anymore so punched the button for KUSC. Just in time for Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. And yes, I sang along!

18 Dec
The clouds this morning a fuzzy gray blanket lying heavy on the tops of the Santa Monica Mountains and tucked in over the foothills and city.

18 Dec
Driving around yesterday I saw several celebrities. Robert Pattinson (not really) was driving towards the airport at Lincoln & 83rd in a late model muscle car that had been primed gray but not painted. Edgar Winter (not really), dressed all in black, crossed the street at Lincoln headed towards Marina del Rey Hospital. Stephen Fry (not really), his hair grown out long, crossed in front of me at Pacific and Windward heading towards the Venice Circle. At that point I really did begin to wonder if there was a celebrity lookalike convention in town or something.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

18 Jul
A peregrine falcon has been hunting the bird feeder the last three days. I knew he was around because the little bitty birds don’t eat all the food in the bird feeder by the end of the day. This morning I saw him—actually walking on the ground around my car parked in the driveway. Some little critters must have scurried under to hide. I don’t begrudge the falcon doing what he has to do to survive, but I’m always glad when the little bits manage to elude him. Still, he was gorgeous. When I looked outside to call, “Mr. Peregrine, what are you doing?” he gave me such a look. “What the hell do you think I’m doing dork?” Regal falcons really know how to put you in your place. And he was a different one from last year. That one was light-headed, this guy had a dark brown head. Beautiful, beautiful creature.

16 Jul
“About 4000 Klimt drawings survive, and an indeterminate number more were clawed and peed upon by the cats that roamed his studio.”

Wait, did Klimt live at my house? Ah, the ironic fate of the artist! Who has cats.

15 Jul
Whenever I hear Morgan Freeman narrate Through the Wormhole it’s like listening to God explain the cosmos.

13 Jul
Mustard is a very persistent condiment, kind of like the Troll of the food world. Just sayin’.

12 Jul
A motorcycle cop stepped into traffic on Lincoln Blvd. hill near Jefferson, where the presidents meet. He let three tonier cars pass but flagged down the ancient Toyota covered in Bondo. Economical profiling? This didn’t strike me as a very safe way to do a traffic stop. I eyed him suspiciously as I passed to see if he was a fake cop.

12 Jul
A Ferris wheel and Tilt-a-Whirl in the middle of Windward Avenue this morning, and other carnival rides arrayed around Venice Circle.

11 Jul
I liked Crones Don’t Whine but I’ve had to stop reading it because I’ve decided to embrace my Inner Whiner. As well as my Inner Martyr, my Inner Bitter Old Hag, my Inner Depressive and my Inner Constant Complainer.

Because as Jane Wagner said, “I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.”

9 Jul
My mind is on fire with a new-old idea but what can I do with it in this world of No Damned Time?

9 Jul
I should write a book about remembering the good and letting go of the bad. I’ll call it Remember This, Not That.

6 Jul
That supporting actress who was on that show that I can’t remember the name of…I ran into her twice in three days.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

26 May

A brawny tattooed man wearing a plastic glove waiting while a tiny blond chihuahua makes up its mind about crapping on the Fire Dept lawn.

24 May

The white heron flying slow and majestic across Ballona Creek Bridge.

23 May

The eager and too-frequent “uh-huh” of someone not listening so much as wanting the talker to know she’s listening.

21 May

Bird sex going on atop the building across the way. It’s not nearly as dramatic as elephant sex.

20 Apr

For Francesca: the crow standing in the middle of the street near a tasty morsel nodding his head and cawing in satisfaction.

19 Apr

Something you don’t see every day: a man grabbing his crotch & loudly tooting a toy horn while standing in a liquor store door.

19 Apr

Well, actually, I drive through Venice every day so I see sights of a similar nature fairly regularly.

19 Apr

What distinguished this guy was that we was well dressed in khakis, a beret, and an ABT t-shirt.

19 Apr

Maybe it was a new advertising venture. I hear donations to the arts are waaaaay down.

19 Apr

Also, when he finished his horn salute he marched back into Star Liquor.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I’ve been thinking about blogging this for weeks, but I’ve been so busy at both work and home that many things fall through the cracks. Then yesterday, lizziebelle posted an eery story that prompted me to get on with it.

This all started months ago. I was driving home from work southbound on Pacific Avenue in Venice. It’s the last major north-south street before the beach. Past Venice Blvd. there’s a long stretch with no cross streets, just alley entrances on the western (beach) side, all bearing names like “28th Place.” Pedestrians on this western side have to walk on the actual street because the houses and apartments crowd right up to the street edge, and parking is tight. Usually the traffic moves swiftly, people rushing to the Marina Peninsula or Washington Blvd. Sometimes when there’s good beach weather, the traffic slows to a crawl, but even then it usually keeps moving. However, one night some months back it got seriously backed up, so much so that I actually had to come to a stop and sat there for several minutes.

Now, there is one piece of property along the western side which doesn’t have structures at street’s edge. One place is recessed back from the street with a dirt lot for parking cars along Pacific. The lot is also crowded on the southern side by old trees. As it happens, this odd-man-out piece of property is the one I stopped beside. I did what one does when sitting in traffic, looked around and registered things I usually speed by, and as I turned my head west I saw that I was aligned with a walkway running behind a series of linked cottages. It was as clear as day back there, though it was evening. A woman sat on the small stoop behind the first cottage, her legs stretched in front of her, elbows resting on knees, head down and staring at the ground between her feet. Such an aura of despondency hovered about her that I kept looking, fascinated. She had dark, wavy hair worn down past her shoulders and a dark, rather shapeless dress. It hit her mid-calf and I saw that her feet and legs were bare. The dress could have belonged to any era from 1920 onward, even further back in time if it actually went to the ground and she’d hitched it up to air our her calves.

As I stared and wondered why she was so sad, I guess she sensed me looking. Her head came up suddenly. Our eyes met. I was embarrassed to be caught, but such a look came over her face… The sorrow remained, but a spark had been added of something like defiance or anger or… I don’t know. Something old and negative and about me…but I thought not strictly about me, either. I just happened to be there to receive it.

Well, then I was really embarrassed. She had every right to be angry with me for staring and intruding upon her despondency, so I hunkered my head between my shoulder blades and quickly shifted my eyes back to the road. Thankfully, the traffic moved not long after. I stole another look before passing the property. She still stared my way with…whatever that negative surge was. I thought about her for the rest of the drive home, but—as these things go—promptly forgot about it when I got home and had chores and what all to do. Occasionally as I whizzed by that property each night, I’d think about her fleetingly, getting embarrassed all over again, or puzzled and wondering what had been up with her. I might even have stolen a glance that way, but usually couldn’t make anything out. It was quick, you know? I usually passed that place in seconds, in a hurry to get home.

Then one night several weeks back, I was maybe not driving as fast, or the traffic slowed (but didn’t stop), or—I’m not sure. This time as I drove by I took a good look towards that walkway. And I realized I couldn’t see it. Not just that it was too dark or that a car stood in the way (there were no cars in the dirt lot), I mean I couldn’t see it. Something blocked it. I had passed the property by the time that registered, and that part of Pacific isn’t friendly to people stopping and backing up. Too much traffic, not enough parking to pull over, and besides, I wanted to get home. I decided that I’d try to remember to give it a better look the next night.

I’m easily distracted these days and it was actually several days before I looked again. There was definitely a gate blocking the view of the walkway, but it didn’t look like a new gate. I thought, “Well, it must have been open when I stopped here that time.” I hadn’t remembered seeing a gate, but you know, it had to have been there. So the next time I remembered, I slowed down, risking irate honks from the cars behind me, when I got to the place where I’d been stopped before in direct alignment with the walkway. I recognized quite well the angle I’d been looking from.

The thing is, there were no linked cottages there, just a single house. And remember those trees on the south side of the dirt lot I mentioned? That night I realized that I not only could not have seen a walkway from that position, I couldn’t even see the gate. To see the gate I had to be ten, fifteen, twenty feet north of there and looking at an angle. There was no visibility of the gate or a possible walkway when looking dead on.

Dead on. Dead on. I looked dead on that night, but I still have no idea how I saw. Or who. Or what.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.