Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Page 2 of 3

No labels, please

Published on May 18, 2009 in Meaning Making and Psychology. 82 Comments Tags: Blog, Childless Not By Choice, Fashion, Francophile, Friends, I hate L.A., Igor, La Belette Rouge, Memoir.

Years ago I had a friend who explained every thought, feeling or impulse I ever had on my ennneagram number. And, she may be right that I am “such a Four“—and that all I do, think and say is what a four would do—but I am not just a number or a diagnosis or a Myers Briggs type. No one, I feel sure, likes being summed up to a number, a label or an astrology sign.

Recently a friend from non-bloggy life boiled down my blog to a formula: “One day a week you write about a product. One day a week you write about something personal. And, one day a week you write about hating L.A.” I have to tell you that her accurate assessment made my blood boil. Something about hearing my blog formula from another (in what felt like less than complimentary tones) made me feel as if nothing new or novel can exist outside of the expected and that I am trapped in a pattern of behavior and being that are beyond my ability to control. It felt as a reductive as the enneagram assessment. Maybe my enneagram loving friend would say that my anger at being labeled and having my blog labeled is a four thing. But I bet ones, twos, threes, fives, sixes, and sevens wouldn’t like it either.

I want to prove my friend wrong and write about politics, poetry, polemics or Poland or something outside of her pre-conceived expectations—something other than my hatred for L.A., my love of J Crew charm bracelets, and my sessions with Igor but at the end of the day that is all I have. It isn’t a lot, but it is what I have, and everyone says to write what you know. Oh, and, she failed to mention the Lily category. See, I have more than three topics.

Having said all that, for the last couple of months I have been trying to label my blog. What is it, anyways? It is not a fashion blog. Gosh no. I don’t look at fashion magazines and I don’t even know what is in style. If it weren’t for Couture Carrie, WendyB, and Savvy Mode I’d never know. I am no longer a francophile blog. Yes, I am a francophile and this is a blog written by a francophile and occasionally I talk about my love of France but mostly I don’t. It is not a “writer’s blog” even though I write about writing. It is not a dog blog, or a relationship blog or even a home blog—-but I do talk about all of those things. And, it is most certainly not an infertility blog even though I have moaned about my infertility almost the whole time I have been blogging.

I suppose that what this blog, over time, has become about is me and my life. Yikes. I never meant for that to happen but it did. When I tell people that I write, outside of the blog, about my life I feel no shame. Personal essay and memoir are respected genres. But when I tell people that I blog and they ask me what it’s about I stammer and stumble and hemm and haw. It sounds terribly narcissistic to be blogging about myself and why do I assume that anyone will care about me, my therapy, or what I am thinking. I sort of endlessly assume that no one will and then I am surprised that such lovely people show up and read and comment and add so much to the conversation and to my life.

I love writing and I enjoy my topics, even if there are only four of them. In time this could change and a year from now this blog could be all about the poetics and polemics of Polish potters. I doubt it, but it could happen. Change is possible even if I am a Four, Pisces, XNFJ who has temporal lobe epilepsy.

1 of 365

Published on May 14, 2009 in 365 things that don't suck about L.A.. 76 Comments Tags: 365 things that don't suck about L.A., Architecture, Art, I hate L.A., L.A. Stories.

(365 Things that don’t suck about L.A.)

A week or so ago JChevais told me about Schmutzie( thank you J!!!) and how we had some stuff in common and she was right. Please see this and this and be prepared to be amazed. I love Schmutzie’s blog and her writing and just visiting her blog for a few days and learning about her blog Grace in Small Things in which Schmutzie is “waging a battle against embitterment”. She explains her mission and how you can share in it better than I could as I am still bitter, or at least semi-sweet.

After reading a few of her Grace in Small Things posts I was inspired to stop constantly complaining about the place I live and tell you the good things in L.A, both large and small. Yes, there are good things. I am not sure I can do it but I am going to try and tell you 365 good things about L.A. This might take a while. Don’t get me wrong, I still hate this place. But I don’t hate:

# 1: The Getty

The Getty is one of the most beautiful museums in the world and if I didn’t live here this is a place I would dream of visiting. For $10 parking I can get into one of the worlds most amazing museums in the United States. Truth be told it is the building and the location and not so much the collections or the shows at the Getty that make me brave the 405 freeway.

I will admit that when the Getty shut down its Malibu museum I was not at all happy to hear about the new Getty on the hill that Richard Meier was to create. I loved the original museum which is now the Getty Villa. I was sick that I could no longer visit this museum that felt to me more like a spiritual home than a mere museum.

I didn’t want to like the Getty only I couldn’t help it. I was unable to fight its Acropolis like significance. In a city whose culture is big budget film and non-fat frozen yogurt there was no denying the impact of the collective psyche of L.A. that having a museum high on the hill that would not be ignored.

When I go to the Getty I spend more time walking the building, the staircases and the gardens than I do the galleries. It is the space, the majesty and the way that Meier’s white stoned masterpiece gives me a kind of peace I have never felt in a church.

I like to sit by the main fountain and watch foreign tourists, students with their sketch pads, senior citizens on a day tour, and couples on an artsy date. There is not only a center to this building but many centers. I feel an impulse to visit the many centers of this one building and spend significant time in each one. This is not a museum with one center—but many—and all of the centers hold. That speaks to Richard Meier’s genius.

The last time I went to the Getty was after a session with Igor. He-weasel and I played hooky and we ate cauliflower curry soup and chicken wraps and sat outside with a view that only made the soup taste better. I am going to visit the Getty a lot while we are here. Some day I when we are living in a place that I love and we are far from L.A. I want to have memories of sitting in the Getty garden.

I could go on about why I love the Getty or you could just look at my pictures.

One down and 364 to go.

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All pictures of the Getty were taken by me.

Writing as an affliction

Published on May 13, 2009 in Meaning Making and Writing in Valencia. 80 Comments Tags: Lists, Memory.

When I was eight, or so, I started having these episodes in which I knew I wasn’t me but I didn’t know who I was and that I felt unreal and that the world felt unreal and it was scary as hell. I asked my mother if it ever happened to her and she said it hadn’t and that was the last we spoke of it. Sometimes I would mention when I had a ‘not me’ episode and then move on. These ‘not me’ things would happen maybe four or five times a week and last a second or two and they were always a bit frightening and disorienting.

As I got older I learned that these experiences were called depersonilization and derealization and once I learned what they were I thought that it meant there was something wrong with me and that it was some kind of little swiss cheese hole in my psyche that if I worked hard enough I could fill up and stop them from happening. A decade of therapy did nothing to reduce the frequency.

Years later and several EEGs later it was determined that I had temporal lobe epilepsy. They aren’t the kind of seizure that inspires one to ask if they should put a pencil under my tongue as I flail about—no, not that kind. I have the kind of seizure that nobody but me notices, simple partial seizures. I tell you all this not to share the boring details of my brain or even to try to explain temporal lobe epilepsy but rather to tell you what the neurologist said when he saw me taking detailed notes in my journal as he explained my diagnosis.

The super cute Chinese neurologist asked if I wrote a lot. Did I keep journals? Was I a list maker? Was I very interested in philosophy and the meaning of life? I was wondering if all these questions were on his list of must have qualities in a partner. I was happy to answer yes to all of his questions. Instead of asking me out Dr. McBrainy explained that those with temporal lobe seizures are prone to hypergraphia and a search for meaning( as the temporal lobe is considered the God spot of the brain).

At first, upon getting the diagnosis I was a little disappointed that Dr. McBrainy hadn’t asked me out and I was relieved to learn that there was something real that was causing my ‘not-me’ moments. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t psychological. It was real. But, then I started to feel a kind of sadness about having my 95 diaries and my play, poems, and short stories reduced to a brain problem.

It wasn’t and couldn’t be the only why. There had to be others. There was the high school teacher who told me I had a talent and there was the blank pages ability to hear my words and never judge me. There was my love of reading and of words and how books had been there for me when no one else had and how my father had wanted to be a writer and never was and reasons beyond the reach of biology.

Joan Didion, being the brilliant writer she is, has another explanation of the why of writing:

“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” – Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook,” Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Strangely I prefer being labeled a “lonely and resistant rearranger of things, an anxious malcontent”, and a child “afflicted at birth with some presentiment of loss” better than having my writing explained by a medical condition. The seizures, thanks to Dr. McBrainy, are gone; the writing, or the hypergraphia, remains.

Igor wants us to buy a six bedroom house. Care to move in?

Published on May 11, 2009 in Belette in Psychotherapy, On Home and Psychology. 86 Comments Tags: Freud, Home, Igor, Los Angeles, Louise DeSalvo, Mother, Moving, On Moving, Psychoanalysis, Psychology.

I am always mindful of how Igor will find me when I am sitting in his waiting room and waiting for him to finish whatever he does before I arrive. My usual waiting activities are: check my lip gloss; check my email; look at his ugly assortment of artwork and wonder what he was thinking; peruse his magazines and tell myself I should read one of his Time Magazines as it will make him think I am smarter but instead I pick up his August 2008 copy of Travel and Leisure that I have flipped through over 20 times. When the time is getting close for my appointment I get in place. I turn my cell phone off. I put my handbag in my right hand and I prepare to jump up on his arrival. I always hope and never manage to hop up before he enters the room. I should give up this goal but each and every session I try and fail to beat him in this one sided game that he always wins.

Last Thursday I did not do any of those things and I feel sure he noticed. When I arrived I took out the book I was reading, “On Moving” by Louise DeSalvo and I was so engrossed that I did none of my usual activities. I even forgot to turn my cell phone off and so a message came in and when Igor came in the room to invite me into his inner sanctum I was on the phone with a book on my lap and my handbag nowhere ready for easy access.

When I was seated on his big leather couch that has deteriorated from holding heavy issues, the weight of denial and decay that comes from being sat on for 30 hours a week, Igor did not ask me how I was or how the traffic was or even why I was not in my usual state of ready in his waiting room but instead he asked me what book I was reading. I told him the title and the subtitle, A Writer’s Meditation on New Houses, Old Haunts, and Finding Home Again, because I wanted him to know that this was not a how-to book on moving.

“Right now I am reading about Freud’s move from Vienna to London.” I told him so he didn’t think it was a book filled with charming antidotes about the moves of Danielle Steele, Dan Brown and James Patterson. The message I was trying to send was, ‘I am smart and deep. And, even Freud suffered because of his move from Vienna to London, i.e. take my suffering seriously.’

“So, are you preparing to move?” Igor asked oozing with hope.

“No.” I said firmly in a moment of momentary sadism. “Why, do you think I should?”

We quickly moved on and went through a dream about my half-brother’s half-brother. No surprise, Igor thought the dream was all about my mother. We did other work but we ended up back talking about home and my mother

“I think you need a house, a large space. A home with space is one of the best defenses against your mother, that and living.”

“Do you have a side business? Are you a realtor? Do you have a home that you think I should see?”

Igor laughed his laugh. It is a laugh filled with an accent from a country I am not even sure exists anymore and with an abandonment that comes from having enormous self-confidence and a genuine joie de vivre.

“No, but I wish I did.” More laughter.

Igor composed himself, “But you do need space”.

“How big?….six bedrooms?” I joked.

“If you can afford it.” He said completely devoid of hyperbole.

“But, we had four bedrooms, two baths, and about 2000 square feet in Chicago and that felt too much. It made the house seem empty and made the absence of a child feel even greater.”

“That,” Igor said with out a hint of irony, “was then and this is now.”

He has said this before. It is not a new theme. Igor and He-weasel both think that my living in such a small condo is not good for me. Igor argues that the nature of my relationship with my mother is not to have my own internal or external space. He-weasel thinks that being in such a small place makes me feel like I am back home in my childhood room. I sometimes feel they are in cahoots on this issue( I love it when I can use the word cahoots. It is one of my favorite ‘c’ words along with cattywampus and chicanery).

Igor has made this argument before with less directness and less effect. Strangely, for reasons totally unclear to me, I decided he was right and that we need to get really serious about looking for a house. Igor, He-weasel and likely even you know that I don’t plan on living in L.A. forever but our lease is up in two months and we are going to have to move again. Wherever we will move will not be forever but just because it won’t be forever doesn’t mean that it can’t be okay for now. Do you like my unbridled enthusiasm about my search for a home in L.A.?

It has been four days since seeing Igor and three and a half days since I finished the book and I am still feeling like he may be right. Perhaps he is wrong about needing six bedrooms but he is right about the space. With DeSalvo’s book in hand I feel like I can survive another move, make sense of the last ones and maybe even get clear of what I really want in our new home instead of going into house hunting unconsciously( I will be writing a lot more about her brilliant book. This may be my favorite book of 2009 and I feel absolutely certain that DeSalvo wrote it just for me. La Francamericaine who told me about my favorite book of 2008 told me about this book and she too is quite convinced it was written just for her. I assure you, I will be writing about DeSalvo and her fantastic book and how it has moved me and what it has unearthed in me).

51 days until our lease is up and I am only slightly panicking. I would feel better if Igor was my realtor. I could look at houses while I lie on his couch. We could figure out what my resistance to houses with wood paneling is really about.

Great things that go great together

Published on May 8, 2009 in Objects. 50 Comments Tags: Art, Kate Spade, Love, Salinger, Westie.

Years ago when I walked through a Richard Serra sculpture for the first time I thought of the music of Philip Glass. Why? Hell if I know. A year or so later I learned that Richard Serra and Philip Glass are good friends. That day at the book shop at the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A. I bought the book Evidence: the work of Candy Jernigan. It turns out that Candy Jernigan was married to Philip Glass. I tell you this not to claim any psychic prowess, as I have none because if I did I would have saved my 100K on infertility treatment, but to argue that there are clusters of connectedness that transcend my conscious understanding.

I have another cluster of connectedness I have yet to make sense of. My favorite architect is Frank Gehry. I love Gehry’s work in a ‘his buildings make me cry and fill my dreams’ kind of way. I love Jeff Koons art work. And, I love West Highland Terriers. All of these loves come together at Bilbao Guggenheim. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim has a 40 foot-topiary of a West Highland Terrier by Jeff Koons. Is there a common thread to all three of these things that is beyond my conscious awareness? If so someone please explain the connection to me. My lame guess is that there is a bigness, boldness, and exuberant joy to all three and yet I fear my subjectivity is in the way of me seeing the whole picture.

It is easier to get the connection of my affinity for Wes Anderson films, Kate Spade graphics, and J.D. Salinger. Even though there is no provable relationship between the three of them: It is my unprovable fiction and fraudulent assertion that Kate and Wes are twins separated at birth and that there father was the reclusive and rye author of Franny and Zooey. Sure, Kate and Wes were born seven years apart. I don’t let that stop me from constructing an implausible explanation.

Yes, I admit my theory is without any merit. I still say that the three are related in a thematic if not genetic way. There is a theme to this pudding: WASP-y gone awry. Or as Matt Zoller Seitz puts it “Anderson’s privileged milieus and his naive, gregarious, but often maladjusted characters are Salingeresque. With its prep-school setting and prematurely jaded man-boy hero, Rushmore often plays like The Catcher in the Rye by way of Peanuts, minus the sense—so keenly felt in both Charles Schulz’s and Salinger’s work—that there’s a vast difference between how characters see themselves and how the world sees them.”

Now would someone explain the connection in my love of William F. Buckley Jr., Hoss Cartwright and the Real Housewives of New York City?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAQ9KyxDYUY][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il4VDf-ugPI]