Rainy-Day Schedule

No, it's not exactly raining—this being Los Angeles and all—but today feels amiss.

In part that is because I am editing stories at a cafe on Sunset Boulevard, instead of in my office on Sunset Boulevard, because our Internet has had persistent problems for about a week, and I was teetering on the brink of sanity trying to work within our Web-based publishing tool there under those circumstances.

So I am editing stories in a big leather arm chair—fantasizing about that time within the next 10 minutes when I will buy a cup of chai tea—with my laptop in the place for which it was named. It is gray outside. It feels like Berkeley. This could be Cafe Strada or Milano, if there were more students and fewer models in the neighboring seats.

At Warner elementary school, when it rained, we could not go outside for recess, and instead played games inside at our desks as part of an alternate plan known as "Rainy-Day Schedule." The only game I can remember was called Heads-Up-Seven-Up, and had something to do with hiding our faces in our hands, heads down on desks, until something happened, but I can't remember what.

December 7, 1987

Dear Journal,

Life is hard in Mr. McLeod's class. Today is Monday so we have spelling homework (yuck!). I hate spelling homework. This week our words are: herbicides, diurnal, endoskeleton, classification, arachnids, plastron, colloquial, perceived, immoral, absorption, and statistician.

Here it is December, and I still can't get over October. It really was a terrible month with the earthquake, the stock market crash, and it rained on Halloween. This month should be better. After all, Hanukkah is in only nine days. I can't wait.

Alice

Potential Titles for my Future Memoirs

Motivated by Coffee: The AD Story

Motivated by Fear, Fueled by Coffee: The AD Story (borrowed, with permission)

Motivated by the Calorie Counter on my Heart Rate Monitor: The AD Story

Distracted in Yoga: The AD Story

Accident Prone (Or, Why I Am Wearing This Patch Over my Eye): The AD Story

Commitment to Finding Better Airfare Than You Are Likely to Be Able to Find on Your Own: The AD Story

Apropos of Nothing: The AD Story*

Eh, You Get the Gist: The AD Story


*Current front-runner

Elements of Style

I must have managed sleep, because I dreamed the most awful of dreams. I dreamed that, for some reason I couldn't identify, there had been a public exposé of the em dash—that it had fallen somehow out of favor, and that it was not to be used ever again acceptably in written language. And I was seriously crushed—not to mention embarrassed, since I have used the thing semi-obsessively for years—and honestly wondered how I was ever going to write again with any flair (or at least I fancy I’ve ever written with some flair anyway).

I lean so hard on that beloved em dash; I think it has something to do with the Emily Dickinson class I took at Berkeley, in which we dissected—and I savored—Dickinson’s use of handwritten dashes of all lengths and angles in her manuscripts. And I like to think that my own proclivity to the em dash gestures toward that expressiveness. Not that I think I can fairly compare myself to Emily Dickinson, but you get the gist. (Also in my dream, parentheses were déclassé, and then I knew I was really screwed.)

Auld Lang Syne Language

Happy New Year, lovelies! I thoroughly enjoyed the last couple weeks of 2007, which involved a lot of friend time, and family time, and a lot of touring around California, which—and I know I repeat myself—you just can't beat. It's so breathtaking, our state.
On New Year's Eve, in a friend's Russian Hill apartment in San Francisco, MT innocently inquired as to my hobbies (no doubt after I'd said something snotty about how busy I am and how robust my blessed life already is, dang, lay off). All I could think of to say on the spot was "working out" (which might be a kind of lame cop-out L.A. answer), and "blogging" (which is also kind of a cop-out, since my Internet self is a more composed, less-interesting, anecdotified version of my real-life self and adventures, and I haven't blogged much lately anyway, like I'm Princess Melissa or something). Then of course there is watching Project Runway while texting, but you don't have to tell me that's not a hobby. And hair is not a hobby; it's damage control executed with scientific precision. I like to think I am a good and dutiful friend to many among a close-knit but large group of folks, and I know good friends are an earned privilege. But a hobby? Not so much, I guess.

And of course there's work, which I have resolved to remember in 2008 is not a hobby, but a job—albeit one that happens to consume most of my time including evenings and weekends on account of events, and one that not coincidentally combines things that I deeply care about: writing, photography, and career. Still, how did I come up job-swamped and hobby-free in the waning weeks of 2007? The Sassy-reading 1989 version of me would not have seen that coming.

So I'm putting this out there to friends and strangers, this question of what my new hobby will be in 2008. Can you help me with a suggestion? I always lean toward hobbies that I can parlay/multi-task into being, say, money making as well as fitness promoting, or perhaps crafty and meditative and entrepreneurial and tummy flattening all at once. I'm into free-time efficiencies. But of course, I'm open to any constructive or fun ideas. Whether you know me or not and you've got one, hit me.

[Current potential hobby front runners are Italian language refreshing, healthy vegetarian cooking at a higher level, volleyball (which seems like cheating, because it's one of the blue-eyed boy's existing hobbies, and he'd be coaching me), tennis (same deal), hiking (fab, but achingly obvious)...]

I thank you in advance for your ideas. And I wish all of us more joy in 2008 than we possibly could have known was coming. Then bam—you got it.

On Posterity

Job posting:
[Our magazine] is assembling a team of energetic photographers to shoot the likes of portraits, venues, and event design/décor in the Southern California region. Per-shoot compensation may be about $100 to $250, and strong images are likely to get prominent placement. Prompt turnaround essential. To apply, please send a cover letter, resume, and a few low-res digital samples to Southern California bureau chief [me] with ''PHOTOGRAPHER'' in the subject line.

*****

From: [redacted]
To: Me
Subject: $100?
Shove it up your ass.

*****

From: Me
To: [Redacted]
Subject: Re: 100?
I can't actually believe I'm dignifying your email with a response, but clearly I put the fee right in the posting because I am dealing with a very small budget myself and didn't want to waste anyone's time. Needless to say, I got about 100 qualified resumes anyway. I would gladly pay photogs $10K/day if I could magically manufacture that kind of budget. But you sound like an understanding guy, so I'm sure you know what I mean.
Respectfully,
Me

*****

From: [redacted]
To: Me
Subject: Re: Re: $100?
I apologize, for what it's worth. My IQ seems to run up and down on some kind of rollercoaster, and I sometimes forget that an actual person may read corporate emails. There's something really fine about your response, and even in the fact that you reponded.

I keep this pseudonymous address for sending nuisance emails to corporations, corporate media pooh-bahs, and corporate politicians, and 99.99% of them richly deserve whatever miniscule annoyance I can inject into their day: " Aber die Herrschenden Saßen ohne mich sicherer, das hoffte ich."

Of course it's ridiculous to quote Brecht in the context of nuisance emails, but it's even more ridiculous to do nothing because you can't do more, and I do a little more, when I can. This sounds like a collateral-damage defense: "I dropped a bomb on that email because I thought there were enemy combatants in it." Well... That's exactly what it is, but as a defense it always sounds a little better when it's packaged with some sort of compensation. Nothing perfectly appropriate occurs to me, so... the rest of this email is an English version of the great and beautiful poem To Posterity by Brecht. I hope it washes away the unfortunate impression I made on you when I was aiming at some generic corporate persona.

To Posterity
by Bertold Brecht(translated from German by H. R. Hays)

1.
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?

It is true: I earn my living
But, believe me, it is only an accident.
Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill.
By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me
I am lost.)

They tell me: eat and drink.
Be glad you have it! But how can I eat and drink
When my food is snatched from the hungry
And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty?
And yet I eat and drink.

I would gladly be wise.
The old books tell us what wisdom is:
Avoid the strife of the world
Live out your little time
Fearing no one
Using no violence
Returning good for evil --
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom.
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in the dark ages!

2.
I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came among men in a time of uprising
And I revolted with them.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

I ate my food between massacres.
The shadow of murder lay upon my sleep.
And when I loved, I loved with indifference.
I looked upon nature with impatience.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.
In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers would have been more secure. This was my hope.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

3.
You, who shall emerge from the flood
In which we are sinking,
Think --When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also of the dark time
That brought them forth.
For we went,changing our country more often than our shoes.
In the class war, despairing
When there was only injustice and no resistance.

For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.

But you, when at last it comes to pass
That man can help his fellow man,
Do not judge us
Too harshly.

Haunted by Dreams

Last night I dreamt that I had intended to write a story about the Central Park Conservancy's Halloween ball (an event I have actually covered in real life, twice, and enjoyed very much), but somehow it got forgotten in the shuffle until months later when I got an email that included somebody's high-resolution photos from the ball and a note telling me to post them online straight away. But I'm thinking, "No one wants to read a story in January about a Halloween ball! It's too late! Why doesn't anybody but me use any common sense anymore?!"

"Keep Writing."

I have chronic sleeping problems in general. In October 2006, I didn't sleep basically at all because I was over the moon about my new guy. In December, I didn't sleep because I traveled so much and ate and drank in excess. On Friday night, I had a nightmare about An Inconvenient Truth, after I had just seen it, and that was wrapped up together with a work nightmare (glacial melting was threatening to drown all the attendees at a conference my magazine was hosting, and forcing us to cancel the remainder of it). Saturday night/Sunday morning I dreamed I was writing a story for the Web site, and it was particularly tricky because I was trying to come up with smart headlines and decks, and, worse, I was linking and formatting the document, and it was really exhausting. I have dreams about work a lot, and this is troubling because I'm not curing cancer, but rather I'm writing about parties, and that shouldn't be particularly nightmarish, except that I work so much and the buck generally stops with me which stresses me out constantly.

Last night, I was having a work dream--about writing or assigning some story. This caused me to wake up before 7 with no alarm, so I lounged in bed reading the book I'd started last night with such optimism. This is a book written by a woman whom I'd seen speak at UCLA, and who had signed her memoir, "Keep writing!" which always tickles me. (I have a lot of those in my bookshelves.) The basic premise is that the author is having an affair with the dance teacher she'd started going to for lessons to impress this other guy she'd started dating, who was big into dancing. (This topic is particularly close to me these days, since I'd had mini panic attacks related to the fact that my guy is so into dancing, and that's not my area. See also "not sleeping well in October.") The girl is a yoga-going, horse-riding, self-proclaimed unfashionable tomboyish divorcee, so I was just enjoying her story although not particularly relating as I was reading last night. But this morning, I kept reading after I'd woken up from my nightmare, and she was talking about being a journalist covering the Golden Globes and the Oscars and other galas that are "supposed to be great but never are" and about never feeling thin or young or insidery enough at those things, and that that in small part contributed to making her feel like she's drifting around, living her life on an iceberg with a camp stove, subsisting, and seeing the mainland on the horizon where people are really living. This has got me in a mood, all day long. Thank heaven for one particular friend in L.A., the bioinformatician-slash-reformed-party-girl, who indulges all these moods and gratifies me with commiseration and empathy.

You're Blessed With a Purpose, Supa Star

I’m a little obsessed with the e-newsletter Daily Candy. Even if I don’t love all the products those gals write about, I love their fun turns of phrase—and that great formula they’ve got: open with a naughty or kitschy pop culture reference from mid-80’s to mid-90’s, discuss greatness of some product/resto/Web site in two paragraphs, close with fun one-line kicker alluding to first pop culture reference. Oh, and to the left is that darling illustration of a hip girl with big sunglasses balancing her purse on her knee while she digs for something in there, or sitting on a bar stool, or drinking milk from the carton in pink slippers. And all this comes irresistibly packaged with a punny subject line like, “Supa Star” (about a label called Supayana), or “Clip Art” (about a new nail salon) or “Chic Happens” (about a personal shopping service). Gets me every time.

But basically, Daily Candy is all just about stuff you can buy, stuff to fill your closet, stuff to make you look sexy, stuff to drink, that kind of thing. And I guess I just felt like I needed more inbox stimulation than that.

That’s when, maybe three years ago, I started subscribing to DailyOm, which as far as I can tell, is a Daily Candy ripoff that uses the same basic formula to discuss spiritual things. Hippie stuff like meditation and connecting with the earth through rocks and things. Positivity. Self and community empowerment. Self love. And instead of the cute girl balancing her handbag, there’s always the same drawing of leafy bamboo. And the typical subject lines are more like, “Alive in Joy,” “Sacred Sentinels,” and “Finding Your Pinnacle.” Since I started getting these emails, I’ve forced myself to read them every day. (I figure it’s only fair to make myself moderate my Daily Candy- and New York Best Bets-reading time with time spent reading about something I can’t buy. Why can't I buy it?! Dang!)

DailyOm emails are always written in that fortune cookie or horoscope style that is easy to interpret and that you find totally resonant if you’re going through something in your life. If I was thinking about my ‘Tross, I’d get a DailyOm about breaking away and I would gulp down a tear or two and feel really touched. Or if I was trying to decide whether or not to move across country, I’d get a DailyOm about making positive change or dealing with tough decisions. I like to forward these emails around to my friends who are also dealing with stuff. Truth is, DailyOm isn’t very well written. And it’s really much, much too long (usually around 400 words compared to Daily Candy’s 200). So I get kind of bored (like I’m reading about staying focused, and I have to stop halfway through to read other emails). And often there are errant exclamation marks in the middle of words. But still, I think a few minutes of reflection every morning never hurt anyone.

I recently got an Om about purpose:

Blessed With A Purpose
Your Life's Work

Many people are committed to professions and personal endeavors they never consciously planned to pursue. They attribute the shape of their lives to circumstance, taking on roles they feel are tolerable. Each of us, however, has been blessed with a purpose. Your life's work is the assemblage of activities that allows you to express your intelligence and creativity, live in accordance with your values, and experience the profound joy of simply being yourself. Unlike traditional work, which may demand more of you than you are willing to give, life's work demands nothing but your intent and passion for that work. Yet no one is born with an understanding of the scope of their purpose. If you have drifted through life, you may feel directionless. Striving to discover your life's work can help you realize your true potential and live a more authentic, driven life.

To make this discovery, you must consider your interests in the present and the passions that moved you in the past. You may have felt attracted to a certain discipline or profession throughout your young life only to have steered away from your aspirations upon reaching adulthood. Or you may be harboring an interest as of yet unexplored. Consider what calls to you and then narrow it down. If you want to work with your hands, ask yourself what work will allow you to do so. You may be able to refine your life's work within the context of your current occupations. If you want to change the world, consider whether your skills and talents lend themselves to philanthropic work. Taking stock of your strengths, passions, beliefs, and values can help you refine your search for purpose if you don't know where to begin. Additionally, in your daily meditation, ask the universe to clarify your life's work by providing signs and be sure to pay attention.

Since life's journey is one of evolution, you may need to redefine your direction on multiple occasions throughout your lifetime. For instance, being an amazing parent can be your life's work strongly for 18 years, then perhaps you have different work to do. Your life's work may not be something you are recognized or financially compensated for, such as parenting, a beloved hobby, or a variety of other activities typically deemed inconsequential. Your love for a pursuit, however, gives it meaning. You'll know you have discovered your life's work when you wake eager to face each day and you feel good about not only what you do but also who you are.

It’s no Supa Star, but it’s fun to think about. Now if only I could buy it.

Mean Girls

Last night I read a handful of pages from a blog so horrible it burned itself right into my eyeballs. This is the blog of a woman who thinks she’s better than all the women in the world—based on what she describes as her undeniably hot physical appearance, her level of education (four years of college), strong libido, financial stability (six months worth of savings), and interest in guns, gambling, and science fiction—and also better than the vast majority of the men, which makes it woefully hard for the poor girl to date, she says. “Quality dates quality,” she says, so she offers as a dating tip that most of the men who try to court her would be better off approaching fat, desperate, single mothers in need of U.S. citizenship—women more on their own level, she says.

This attitude would be quite bad enough if she didn’t also include many references to things that disprove her personal theories of greatness. I give as evidence this picture—which she self-selected and supplied as evidence of hotness—cropped tight on her chunky, unstylish, officey, suitable-for-wear-with-nude-pantyhose shoes. (I’m avoiding linking to the blog itself, because the last thing this miserable hussy needs is more support—and it seems she somehow makes her living through hits from her blog.)

Anyway, the point is, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize (contrary to my belief, say, in college) that I’m not better than anyone else. Matter of fact, no one is better than anybody else. Certainly not celebrities. (Simon Doonan says in Wacky Chicks: “We’ve done something silly…In the 1980s, for example, a collective screechy hysteria infected popular culture, and everybody rashly decided that movie actors were really, really, really important…We chose show biz folk. And then we sat there like puddings and inhaled all this drivel about the supposedly squintingly brilliant glam lives of these celebs, and we actually started to believe the hype.”) Certainly not homegirl with the blog. Certainly not rich people, or very attractive people, or even people who live on the coasts. (Although of this it has been admittedly hard to disavow myself.)

So the point is, I hope I never write anything here or anywhere that comes off as self important in the way that the lady miss Chunky Shoes writes hers. (Add this to the existing set of new blog anxieties.) This girl just wants a life filled with good words, a good man, family and friends, her lamentably undisciplined cat Cali, Raiders football, some cute home wares from Anthropologie, very tall shoes, Court TV, and so forth. So please, forgive me in advance, if it reads any other way.

Here Goes Nothing

Some years ago, when I started writing for a living, I stopped altogether writing for or about myself. These days I write about parties. (More specifically, I write about the flowers and table linens at parties, but we'll get to that, I'm sure.) Six months ago I moved to Los Angeles from New York to do the same. And since then, for a number of reasons (theories include: the extremely comfy yet unmotivating quality of Los Angeles and some short-lived but undeniable romantic contentment), I've not challenged myself to do anything especially great, and I recently realized how unbecoming that is on me. So, I'm hoping that taking up the cliched pursuit of blogging (lord knows I am not above cliches) might choke some inspiration out of me.

Some anxieties about this include but are by no means limited to:

• What self-respecting person who ever wants to keep a job or her friends or meet a man can be completely honest writing about her life online? And what's interesting that's not completely honest?
• I'm afraid I'll approach this with some grave seriousness--precisely the opposite way I approach writing emails to girlfriends that turn out to be really funny because I let it flow and have no expectations of any sort of greatness or sharing-with-posterity appropriateness.
• I want to write my memoir. This is my pie-in-the-sky life goal. And if I jot stuff here, aren't I robbing it from the future book I ought to be working on?
• I'm lazy. I'm likely to forget my own Web address or something. I do stuff like that sometimes.

A note about the title of my infant blog: In college at Berkeley, before I'd ever lived completely alone, I had a lousy tendency to rely on my devoted and detail-oriented roommates to do stuff for me that I might have done myself. Like, my idea of cleaning the apartment was taking all of the books and papers and putting them in neat stacks (I really can't stand clutter). Et voila! Done. Whereas I would let the girls take the Q-tips to the switches on the oven to get out the grit, for example, or bleach the bathroom floor. I handled the clutter, they handled the filth. They used to tell me that my attitude about cleaning was: "You get the gist." You know, look, I put forth a little effort, it looks better in here, yada yada. In some ways that may be the way I approach the other areas of my life. I'm a broad-strokes gal, not a details gal. I'm a writer and editor, but copy editing is my worst nightmare. I don't really like the buck to stop with me. This is not self deprecating; it's simply true. I know myself. And that's half the battle.