Hollywood

An old Spiderman, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes with a dirty sagging costume, gaping around his spindly legs. Cheap tee-shirts piled onto tables, three-for-eleven-ninety-nine, underneath cardboard cut-outs of Edward from Twilight. An old broken-down black Toyota speeds around the corner, making a right on red, with the entire car singing a disco tune, Diana Ross or Dionne Warwick, a newborn baby in the front seat, between the smoking dad and the mom with tubes in her nose. Cinderella and Belle walking around like exhausted cowboys, trying to look magical to get photo-ops but not scoring, counting their money, and pulling their grey-shouldabeenwhite gloves up their arms. A girl is obsessed with Shirley Temple’s handprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese theater. The Dark Knight Joker develops three scenarios in a row for photo ops for two teenage girls in braces and matching little black dresses. A rotating box of one-dollar bills with celebrity cameos replacing the President: Britney Spear one dollar bill, Michael Douglas one dollar bill, Angelina Jolie one dollar bill, all for six ninety-nine. Hare Krishnas do what they’ve been doing for thirty years, singing with their eyes closed and twirling in their robes. Hippies with matted hair and no bras dance and touch each other while their guy friends butcher a John Lennon song on the tambourines. The sun sets on Hollywood, and it doesn’t seem to notice.

Impact

First a ticket, then my car gets hit in the same week and both times it was parked. The person who hit me was honest enough to leave their number, but I’m thinking about the dangers of motionlessness these days. Any number of accidents could have happened throughout the week while I was driving my car, any number of more dangerous ones in fact. I could have gotten a speeding ticket instead of a parking ticket. I could have had a freeway hit-and-run accident.

But twice this week, something bad happened to my car when it was at a standstill. Being at a standstill myself right now, I’m taking that as a warning. Sometimes it’s worse to stop moving. I was talking to a friend a few days ago and told him I had changed my mind about the concept of waiting. I’ve been in a waiting stance, at times meditative and at times not, through my studies and my mild job search, thinking that eventually the right direction, the right job, the right move to make would become apparent to me. I expected this to somehow hit me across the head with obviousness.

Now I realize that things can hit you will you’re at a standstill and that they can sometimes not be the ones you are expecting, bad things can hit you and you’ll be a sitting duck. Moving makes any chance of impact more dangerous, but at least you’re going somewhere. I know I’m back in California on a side note, because when I don’t have much to say, I can always just talk about driving.

Meeting people

In the parking lot of a photo store today, we made an acquaintance. My friend is visiting from Paris, and is following his passion for music. He struck up a friendly conversation with a guy coming out of his car, and we ended up talking, the three of us, for twenty minutes in the parking lot, in the afternoon sun.

We talked about choosing a new career, moving, raising a family, the years going by, French and American culture, music and film, finance and the world economy, living in Los Angeles, following our passion or finding it.

I was thinking about this meeting again tonight, and how wonderful it is to meet new people, especially people like this person, whose genuine kindness just gives you more energy to go on with your day. He and my friend will stay in touch, hopefully, but even just our short afternoon encounter served to make LA a smaller place for my friend, maybe even helped him to see himself at home here, making friends and meeting people on his own.

This is just a short post, but I need to keep writing, keep focusing on the positive, just one step at a time, every day for the next little while.

poetic spam

I want to try and write something every day this month, to resist my hiding instincts. I’m looking for work, planning, thinking and that tends to elicity ostrich behavior in me.

This is something I received in my junk mail folder today and thought it was quite beautiful:

From: Tazmaniandevil

Subject: But ran home

The king’s child went out into the forest.

I’ve noticed some original subject lines, and sometimes even witty phrasings that have caught my eye as I delete the folder, and I’ve often wondered if someone is paid, much like telemarketing jobs, to produce email content for these spam emails, and then given random email addresses to send them to, just like telemarketers are given phone numbers to call.

Drove around town today, running errands. Through Silverlake and Hollywood. After a successful stop into Amoeba, I gave into the hot day and stopped for less than ten minutes to get a watermelon juice on Hollywood Blvd. I noticed Elizabeth Taylor’s star as I stepped around my car. As I ran back, juice in hand, I saw the white envelope of failure slapped against my windshield, tacked by the wiper. A $50 parking ticket. Driving back in the sluggish rush hour traffic, I thought about why tickets make me feel so overwhelmed. I suppose it’s because they’re one of the few instantaneous punishments we get as adults. You do something bad = you pay a fine. Getting a ticket makes me feel like a kid caught in the middle of doing something naughty. It’s embarrassing because there is no excuse.

The sun is setting now, and everything is forgiven. The sweat, the traffic, the ticket and my momentary loss of courage, the heat. The temperature is dropping by the minute, and the sky is changing colors, warming up to golden tones as everything is refreshed. We get a short break before everything starts back up again in the morning. It gets hot early. Maybe I’ll go for a walk tonight.

authenticity

The months that have slowly stretched, like a lazy confused cat, between January and August have been leading to a decision on my part. January is when I was laid off from my job with Disney, and I went from having the title of  “Associate International Localization Producer” to a more nondescript status as a “student”.

I could say this existential period of going from one job to another job, trying to see myself as a project manager, localization producer, document analyst, NGO administrative assistant, Parisian, Angelino has been going on for a while, more specifically since after college. I’ve always managed to be useful and productive in my search for the career, or the field, or the job, or the place I needed to live in. I think it’s fair to say I’ve given each chapter its fair trial and have really believed in each of my moves. I’ve tried to fit in, tried to find my place every time. I don’t think I’ve come to any conclusion, but along the way I’ve crossed some things off my list.

To quote U2 I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, and I’m still searching. We’re in mid-August and I haven’t signed up for any new classes at Pasadena Community College. I’m working through each day, getting up, making my bed, cooking all my meals, starting a regimen of going for walks in the evening when the oppressive semi-arid desert heat lets up a little and the birds squeal of contentment. This is a familiar state of mind for me: the evaluation of the leaving possibility.

I need a job and I don’t want to get a corporate job in the US, which is what my resume currently would point towards. I don’t want to spend productive days in school studying various classes, three-quarters of which will end up being disappointing or the wrong direction for me to go in. I’m thinking of spending three months in Congo, working on three or four different projects. A personal writing project about my country, teaching art in the elementary classes of our school, possibly teaching English at our language center, and working with my father on his museum project.

I’ve been watching old masterpieces lately, Hitchcock, Film Noir, Katharine Hepburn and lined up a few silent movies too. I’m working through a mini-list I’ve been keeping in my head. Yesterday I saw a Film Noir must-see:  the 1944 Laura with a favorite actor of mine, vitriolic deadpan Clifton Webb, who has a line in the movie that I find authentic and courageous and absolutely hilarious. (He’s Lydecker and being interrogated by Detective McPherson, played by Dana Andrews, handsome devil):

Lydecker: McPherson, you won’t understand this. But I tried to become the kindest, the gentlest, the most sympathetic man in the world.

McPherson: Have any luck?

Lydecker: Let me put it this way. I should be sincerely sorry to see my neighbors’ children devoured by wolves. Shall we go?

I’m figuring it out, too. I’m trying to hit that note of authenticity in my own life, and I’ve not been taking the task lightly. But I grew up in Congo, in between a father’s middle eastern culture and a mother’s French culture binded by a shared Baha’i culture, bathed in Congolese culture. I grew up traveling constantly, and those were my formative years. I have a trunk of personal journals and letters dating back to when I was 8 where I’m still trying to find my place and figure out my life. Options for careers go from Lion Tamer to Policewoman and teacher. My list has changed over the years but I still add those three at the top for old time’s sake.

Maybe some people aren’t meant to settle down and have an apartment, and a career and formal education. The times when I feel most myself have never been when I’ve been in that exact situation, and I have tried very hard to stay in this situation. I’ve hung on longer than I should have been able to, in jobs and cities that were not a good fit for me and I am trying to learn from those experiences. It’s awkward to see this written down, but maybe I need the adventure and the crazy unpredictability of Congo, with a ton of different responsibilities in order to find my path, maybe even find myself. It’s almost the only thing right now that keeps me from feeling like I’m withering away into nothingness.

the edge of nature and the city

I live in one of the most industrialized places on earth. A city covered in concrete and six-lane freeways, where people live in their cars. This city is also one of the most nature filled. There are thousands of trees everywhere in Los Angeles, and the city is constantly overshadowed by one of the most devastating natural phenomena. I’m talking about earthquakes.

In LA, you always think of drought and water, rain and lack of rain, water restrictions, air quality and smog, a clear day and a hazy day, the non-native skinny palm trees define one of the most urban of cities, as much as the sprawling lit grid from Mulholland.

I live in a city where I feed squirrels on my balcony, where doves wake me up in the morning, and hummingbirds feed on the flower bushes along my pool.

I love this city probably more than any other city. It isn’t my favorite place on earth. That spot is occupied by a variety of neck-in-neck spots in this world, that rotate and vie with each other for the number one place in my heart with no clear winner and no real loser. They are secret geographies of my heart, places I visit when I need to escape and return to in my waking and dreamful hours. But this city is my city, I see that now. More than Paris ever was, and probably because Paris is so easy and obvious to love, and those are never the things I love the most. I love the hard things to love. The places and things that require effort to love, and a willingness to overlook faults, that require inner vision to really see.

Even now, part of the reason I love this city so much is the fact I don’t fit into its cliche, the image people have of Los Angeles that don’t live here, the artificial veneer of the city that it wants to be but really isn’t.

Two of my final projects for classes (photography and screenwriting) were odes to LA. My script was a love story centered around an East LA taco truck, and my photography final was a series of night shots of Pasadena between 2 and 5 AM. In the photo essay I studied the interplay between nature and the urban landscape, choosing lines and long exposures with wide depth of field to chronicle the loneliness and desolation of the Western city, its non-humanity and industrial design, the struggle between nature and the city, the unexpected beauty that arises from this battle, often lost by nature as it was by the LA River.

Most of who I am was molded in the African landscape and weather of Zaire in the 1980’s, and the African people I still love more than any other people in the world. As a whole, the African people are my home. And African landscapes, even city scapes are overtaken by nature and humanity, in its rawest, stinkiest, most glorious, busiest form. Urbanism cannot win in a continent where weather is harsh and humid, beating down sun and rain through the entire year.

Driving around this city as I do often in those late night/early morning hours, I see the loneliness that is masked by our glorious sunshine. People have no space in this smooth concrete and tarmac landscape, the trees are covered in coiled Christmas lights, planted in lines, the sky is overtaken by city lights erasing the moon and stars, the trees are sped past in cars that never see what is around.

All these things are beautiful in their extremes, the LA River, the San Gabriel mountains, the Pacific Ocean from the Santa Monica pier, neighborhoods planted with a mishmash of exotic trees, hummingbirds and squirrels, doves and coyotes, like that scene in Collateral, where Tom Cruise, driven by Jamie Foxx in downtown LA stop, in the middle of a deserted street while coyotes cross in front of them. The strange contrast of wild things in the urban lansdcape, and familiarity of that experience are part of what I love about LA. In fact, its ambiguities and idiosyncracies define the city for me.

Skateboarding?

Do people skateboard in other cities?

Do they use a skateboard as a primary mode of transportation?

I was kind of out of it on my way to school this morning, wayyyy too early for me at 7:30 AM, and I saw all these kids on skateboards going to school, girls, guys. And it hit me. When I was in Paris, in Haifa, even in Philadelphia, I never used to see skaters. The cities were too hilly, or too cramped or too rainy for skateboards. LA is pretty perfect when it comes to that: sunny all year, pretty flat, wide sidewalks. That, and the fact it was invented here.

But for some reason, this morning, driving to work, it hit me how over the course of my last three years in california, I just got so used to seeing skaters when it is a pretty unusual sight outside of California.

Hearst Castle

On a whim, I set out to Hearst Castle this past weekend. I may have been a little too spontaneous. My phone died before I reached my hotel, and I had to drive three extra hours to find a hotel that was open and had available rooms. I had originally thought of staying in Solvang and visiting the Dutch area, but the hotel erased my reservation, and I had to drive up the rest of the way to Hearst in the middle of the night.

The visit to the castle was pretty memorable. On arrival, I realized there are dozens of various tours depending on the hour of the day, so if you ever go back, chances are you won’t have the same visit. It’s a nifty trick to encourage repeat visits.

Overall, it was a great trip. The coast is so beautiful, the vistas are splendid. It was one of those times where I had to pinch myself to realize how lucky I am to live in such a gorgeous state. And pinch myself to stay awake.

New beginnings

I love Los Angeles because it’s huge, it’s constantly renewing itself, and there is a regular stream of new-comers. It’s like an etch-a-sketch, the metaphor apt, because you never know when the ground is going to shake from under you.

This has been a year of new beginnings for me. Leaving Europe, coming to this sprawling, enormous city, was a painful and envigorating experience, and I have extended this experimentation to everything. Since I’ve been here, I have acted as if I have a new lease on life, reviewing my choices, re-aligning my priorities, re-inventing my experiences.

I’ve done so many things for the first time. First lease in my name on a house, first full-time job with health coverage, first time in a place with no outbound plane ticket, first baseball game and Dodger dog, first time settling in, and letting my experiences take, sink in, grow roots.

The very first episode of This American Life is called New Beginnings. It first aired on November 17, 1995. My first year in college, my first year in the States, at the University of Delaware, my first real culture shock.

The most significant section of the show was the “Should’ve been dead” Act One, where Kevin Kelly lives his last six months on earth, and talks about the experience, and his transformation. The experience is so significant, and so specific, it transcends into a universal human experience, and I could see my life mirrored in a small way in some of the events in his life.

Radio gives you space for thinking. I like that. It’s a form of entertainment that requires you to meet it half-way so you’re never completely passive. You have to fill in the blanks, complete the visuals in the story that the intimate voice narrates.

I did something for the first time this year, I sat down before the year started, and thought about what I wanted this year to be about. I cut out images and words from magazines, without thinking, then glued them on a sheet of paper, we did this with a group of friends in my community at one person’s initiative.

What emerged to me was Authenticity, reconnecting to what moved me as a child, reconnecting to who I am beyond what I think I am expected to be. This has been a salvation this year. I feel free for the first time in a long time, and I welcome the new beginning.

big sky and mountains

I figured out why I like it so much here. It’s a big city, BIG, and the sky is big, and the sun shines on the mountains. I used to go through a cycle in Paris where I’d feel like I was suffocating in my tiny apartment, with a view of other buildings, going in underground metros, to my office with a view of other buildings, escaping momentarily to high points in the city…to see more buildings. I’d run away every few months to the country-side to see mountains and wide open sky. In a lot of US cities on the west coast, you can have a big city and the mountains, and the ocean, and the BIG sky, even just by driving around. Seattle, San Francisco, LA. I just took this picture on Los Feliz Blvd, the other day, since it’s from my phone, it doesn’t do it justice: you can’t feel the gorgeous day, the clear crisp sun, the sun rays on the snow covered mountains in the back, the wind through the trees.