1.10.07, North Hollywood, CA
So long ago – when I was 16 or 18 – ok, not that long ago - I was struggling with my father. Daily. Getting good grades, going to church, popular at school, in a lot of clubs, getting main roles in the school plays, running cross country, but just growing up. That’s all. It’s not much more than that.
But Dad wasn’t handling it well. I could leave the iron on, and he would freeze me out for being his irresponsible daughter for weeks. I could come in 3 minutes later than my 11pm curfew after a night of ice cream cones with friends after a Homecoming Game, and he would tell me he doesn’t love me because God doesn’t love me. If I begged to go spend the night at a not-so-pretty friend’s house, his concern was when I was coming home and doing my Saturday chores of cleaning and waxing all the kitchen cabinets. But when the pretty girl called and asked me out to a play at the local community theatre, he could care less about curfews or the when, the where and the what.
It’s a wonder my dad didn’t just make me angry AND a lesbian. It’s funny that all I got was angry from Surviving Dad. Or some other uncomfortable adjective other than funny.
Anyhoo, I’m bloggingly off-topic …
There was a family friend that stepped in for my dead mom and my remaining OCD father and she saved me. I attribute any success and/or sanity that I have had as a person to a.) the times I was left alone in the silent aftermath of mom’s cancer, and b.) Ms. Plunk.
Ms. Plunk was key in confirming that my dad was crazy. All the times I spent in her car detailing the irrational demands he placed on me as the only one left standing at 3172 Estes, she recanted with her own Plunkian Edits to Survival as a Dowda outside Dowda rule.
It doesn’t take years of therapy for a child with loss to clearly put out to the world how irrevocably damaged their outlook is. The kids left fatherless/motherless after 9/11, and even teenagers with those externally less traumatic losses related to the bad lungs and the complicated health issues that the Ground Zero cleanup workers incurred – kids left with empty chairs at the dinner tables, depressed surviving parents behind closed doors, and no good excuses as their attention waxes and wanes during biology class.
I was among the lucky. I had someone pick me out to foster, someone who needed to mother something while her teenage kid went to college. Due to timing, geography and a genetic code of disease, Ms. Plunk came and put into my head words that have whispered to me over the years, infuriated my attempts to secure a man in my life and given me the reprieve of a lost girl playing with an inferior deck of cards.
It’s what really motivating this move to Brooklyn.
Ms. Plunk said to me one night – she said – after I confessed to her a disturbing dream that I had of my dad’s treating me like a wife, expecting me to sleep in his bed, expecting me to have sex with him. Just a dream, a metaphor of the daily demands placed on my 11-18 year old self, but Ms. Plunk heard beyond the trauma of my emotions shaking out the chaos of mixed signals of a limping family unit. She said to me, words that curse and bless me:
“Don’t worry – you hear me? You just go and make a family for yourself.”
Now for any other motherless daughter in any other generation and any other geography, this may have resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. And it did. And then it didn’t. But mostly, it’s resulted in an unwanted loneliness and a compulsion to seek a safety at home that I’ve formulaically laid out and a family that I’ve only imagined.
“Don’t worry – you hear me? You just go and make a family for yourself.”
So… it’s not about home at all - home is where I live. Home was Memphis, TN. Home is a structure and a place where I can fit some soft pillows in the corner of a worn couch, throw together some good food on a lousy tableclothed table, and invite folks over to talk about the day, the government, the mundane, my hair. Home is a dream state that’s always in flux. And for this washing machine life, Home will be Brooklyn.
But is Brooklyn about family? Is it about soul?
I’ll start with a soul and a mortgage, and maybe the family will come after? Or maybe family will just happen to me.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
I Know I Know –
1.8.07, North Hollywood, CA
I still haven’t come clean on my 2007 resolutions. … still working it out.
I’ll let you know.
Later that day …
Notes to Self:
Do the Write Thing
Who to work for: Spike Lee, Lee Daniels, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, BAM, Steiner Studios
Also, who to live around… Spike Lee, Lee Daniels, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, BAM, Steiner Studios.
I’m sure the real estate developers know this already. Don’t care. Don’t care how I factor into the demog. Don’t care.
I will BeCome my own Cliché.
I still haven’t come clean on my 2007 resolutions. … still working it out.
I’ll let you know.
Later that day …
Notes to Self:
Do the Write Thing
Who to work for: Spike Lee, Lee Daniels, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, BAM, Steiner Studios
Also, who to live around… Spike Lee, Lee Daniels, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, BAM, Steiner Studios.
I’m sure the real estate developers know this already. Don’t care. Don’t care how I factor into the demog. Don’t care.
I will BeCome my own Cliché.
I’m The Worst Blogger.
1.7.07, Burbank, CA
I edit like nuts.
I fact-check my own social history.
I may never ever ever find a man that thinks this is a funny, quirky or lovable trait.
Maybe I’ll find a publisher that does?
I edit like nuts.
I fact-check my own social history.
I may never ever ever find a man that thinks this is a funny, quirky or lovable trait.
Maybe I’ll find a publisher that does?
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig
1.6.07, 8pm, North Hollywood, CA
I called a real estate agent over the holidays who deals in new development, high-rise condos. A too-rich-for-my-blood 2-bedroom, but nevertheless, I called. What the hell.
In Williamsburg. Found it on Craigslist.org. I am how I Google. I shop for real estate on Craigslist.
Oof, is that’s depressing. Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaaay…
Soo called me back with a warm and friendly voicemail confessing her plan to move to Billburg as well in the summer, and how simpatico. The condo is to be in a new development totally unlived in and ready for move-in in July. (Who knows who was priced out of their own home in order for this development to happen.) I’m shopping for brownstone apartments, too, 150 years of paint and shellac. However, the desire to own – finally – something that I can be the first in is pretty damn strong these days.
How freeking American… damn mutated genetics.
Anyhoo, the real estate agent Soo … is she driving up the market in Billlburg? Or will she become my newest best friend? Or will we shop at the same Crate & Barrel and only wave politely when we run into each other? Or is she destined to be the High Priestess of my Home Ownership Neuroses?
It’s been phone-tag and e-tag ever since.
However, I now have a floor plan from the website’s posting, I decorate it obsessively with my 1920s Italian-American Stink of Gaudy. I hang my dad’s mirror in the front room. I arrange my clothes and shoes in the closet. I exchange familiar jokes with the Imaginary Doorman in my mind.
And I believe that I can create my home there. All I’m doing is visualizing the Possible. Seems a little creepy and unhealthy, but I can’t stop.
650K for a 2 bedroom condo seems like a lot, though, for a starter home. Like A LOT a lot. For a toddler home? For a house with training wheels? For a home that stills has stuffed animals and a pacifier to keep from screaming bloody murder? And I get scared. I know I want to move to Brooklyn, but maybe I should find a smaller town, a lower rent. Save some more. It’s felt good, lately. The Saving. So far in my financial life, I’ve saved to skrijmp by. But for the last two years, I’ve saved towards Brooklyn, which means paying off some bills, starting an IRA and a 401K.
These are all new feelings – new, demonstrative actions proving to me that I no longer believe I’m gonna die in my 40s.
I mean, who doesn’t schedule their own death, really?
But the words in my head – ‘settling in Brooklyn’ – sound so glamorous. So end of the rainbow. So legendary. So right. It just sounds like glee. Sounds like the prom and I’m 16 and there’s a guy that’s been buying me cokes at lunch and the prom’s in a month and I might, I MIGHT JUST HAVE a chance to get dressed up and feel like a fucking girl for a change.
I gotta get that Soo on the phone.
I called a real estate agent over the holidays who deals in new development, high-rise condos. A too-rich-for-my-blood 2-bedroom, but nevertheless, I called. What the hell.
In Williamsburg. Found it on Craigslist.org. I am how I Google. I shop for real estate on Craigslist.
Oof, is that’s depressing. Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaaay…
Soo called me back with a warm and friendly voicemail confessing her plan to move to Billburg as well in the summer, and how simpatico. The condo is to be in a new development totally unlived in and ready for move-in in July. (Who knows who was priced out of their own home in order for this development to happen.) I’m shopping for brownstone apartments, too, 150 years of paint and shellac. However, the desire to own – finally – something that I can be the first in is pretty damn strong these days.
How freeking American… damn mutated genetics.
Anyhoo, the real estate agent Soo … is she driving up the market in Billlburg? Or will she become my newest best friend? Or will we shop at the same Crate & Barrel and only wave politely when we run into each other? Or is she destined to be the High Priestess of my Home Ownership Neuroses?
It’s been phone-tag and e-tag ever since.
However, I now have a floor plan from the website’s posting, I decorate it obsessively with my 1920s Italian-American Stink of Gaudy. I hang my dad’s mirror in the front room. I arrange my clothes and shoes in the closet. I exchange familiar jokes with the Imaginary Doorman in my mind.
And I believe that I can create my home there. All I’m doing is visualizing the Possible. Seems a little creepy and unhealthy, but I can’t stop.
650K for a 2 bedroom condo seems like a lot, though, for a starter home. Like A LOT a lot. For a toddler home? For a house with training wheels? For a home that stills has stuffed animals and a pacifier to keep from screaming bloody murder? And I get scared. I know I want to move to Brooklyn, but maybe I should find a smaller town, a lower rent. Save some more. It’s felt good, lately. The Saving. So far in my financial life, I’ve saved to skrijmp by. But for the last two years, I’ve saved towards Brooklyn, which means paying off some bills, starting an IRA and a 401K.
These are all new feelings – new, demonstrative actions proving to me that I no longer believe I’m gonna die in my 40s.
I mean, who doesn’t schedule their own death, really?
But the words in my head – ‘settling in Brooklyn’ – sound so glamorous. So end of the rainbow. So legendary. So right. It just sounds like glee. Sounds like the prom and I’m 16 and there’s a guy that’s been buying me cokes at lunch and the prom’s in a month and I might, I MIGHT JUST HAVE a chance to get dressed up and feel like a fucking girl for a change.
I gotta get that Soo on the phone.
Why Brooklyn?
1.7.07, 2:30 pm, Starbucks in Burbank, CA
Why Brooklyn?
It’s 76 degrees today.
It’s January 7.
.
.
.
.
.
It’s just unnatural. Who needs this much Vitamin D??!
Why Brooklyn?
It’s 76 degrees today.
It’s January 7.
.
.
.
.
.
It’s just unnatural. Who needs this much Vitamin D??!
Taking Stock
12.31.06, 3:23 pm, Burbank, CA
It is the end of the year. Time for me to look back, see what resolutions I've made progress on, see what resolutions I need to make up for '07. And just for the record:
NO, I AM NOT STAYING HOME ON NEW YEAR'S EVE! NO, I AM NOT SPENDING THE LAST NIGHT OF THE YEAR TAKING STOCK OF MY LIFE AND MAKING MY 2007 RESOLUTIONS TO LOSE WEIGHT, SAVE MORE MONEY AND TO GIVE UP DATING ON THE WEST COAST.
NOPE, NOT ME. NOT THE HELL ME.
I did the resolutions earlier today. No, seriously. Citizen Journalist plans well … Of course, I’m not banking blogs to post occasionally throughout the week. Seriously, who does that?
Anyway, as for my goals for the new year, I'm not copping to all of them here publicly, cuz who needs that kind of pressure. But there is one that I'm working on,
thinking about,
weighing the pros and cons of.
Something I've thought about acting on in the past, something we all think about but could never, would never. Something that would create complication, may ostracize me with some, attract me to others, get me new gigs, and kicked out of old ones. It’s simple, it’s revolutionary.
It’s … no, not yet… I'm getting to it.
The resolution for the past couple of years has been to INVITE CHAOS. And I know that's very existential, pretty indefinable and undeniably the resolution of a neurotic chick. But it's really paid off. After one dead boyfriend, several dead family members and a dead career, I battened down the hatches of my life. For the last couple of years, I've been in the basement of my heart, (which is an add-on to the house of my soul) staring at the hammer I could use to bang out the nails to my self-inflicted coffin. INVITING CHAOS has certainly helped to remind me to poke my head out of the bomb shelter to see if there's any life left that I can latch on to.
After 5 years of no dating and hardly any friends – five years surviving a financially driven move to LA, I now have some functioning friends and a couple 3-month dating forays under my belt. 'Course after giving it a go in DATING LA – I don’t know…
…
I’m a little nervous about going much further on this blog entry ……
I’m still thinking about this resolution… I don’t know. It’s pretty big.
Eh, it ain’t THAT big.
I’ll get back with you on it.
For now… I’m out.
It is the end of the year. Time for me to look back, see what resolutions I've made progress on, see what resolutions I need to make up for '07. And just for the record:
NO, I AM NOT STAYING HOME ON NEW YEAR'S EVE! NO, I AM NOT SPENDING THE LAST NIGHT OF THE YEAR TAKING STOCK OF MY LIFE AND MAKING MY 2007 RESOLUTIONS TO LOSE WEIGHT, SAVE MORE MONEY AND TO GIVE UP DATING ON THE WEST COAST.
NOPE, NOT ME. NOT THE HELL ME.
I did the resolutions earlier today. No, seriously. Citizen Journalist plans well … Of course, I’m not banking blogs to post occasionally throughout the week. Seriously, who does that?
Anyway, as for my goals for the new year, I'm not copping to all of them here publicly, cuz who needs that kind of pressure. But there is one that I'm working on,
thinking about,
weighing the pros and cons of.
Something I've thought about acting on in the past, something we all think about but could never, would never. Something that would create complication, may ostracize me with some, attract me to others, get me new gigs, and kicked out of old ones. It’s simple, it’s revolutionary.
It’s … no, not yet… I'm getting to it.
The resolution for the past couple of years has been to INVITE CHAOS. And I know that's very existential, pretty indefinable and undeniably the resolution of a neurotic chick. But it's really paid off. After one dead boyfriend, several dead family members and a dead career, I battened down the hatches of my life. For the last couple of years, I've been in the basement of my heart, (which is an add-on to the house of my soul) staring at the hammer I could use to bang out the nails to my self-inflicted coffin. INVITING CHAOS has certainly helped to remind me to poke my head out of the bomb shelter to see if there's any life left that I can latch on to.
After 5 years of no dating and hardly any friends – five years surviving a financially driven move to LA, I now have some functioning friends and a couple 3-month dating forays under my belt. 'Course after giving it a go in DATING LA – I don’t know…
…
I’m a little nervous about going much further on this blog entry ……
I’m still thinking about this resolution… I don’t know. It’s pretty big.
Eh, it ain’t THAT big.
I’ll get back with you on it.
For now… I’m out.
Keep the Home Fires Burning
12.30.06, 7:58 am, North Hollywood, CA
I think about Brooklyn firemen a lot.
I have a picture of them taped to my cubicle wall. It’s a photo of four of them gathered, full-on firemen helmets and suits, looking up at the building that was on fire in New York back in April or so of last year. An apartment building.
Anyway, I like to keep them near – Brooklyn firemen. I think it's smart – even from this distance.
Maybe when I move, I'll move next to a fire station. Maybe it's because of the 9/11 thing – I don't know. Maybe it’s because of that documentary about the Brooklyn rookie fireman by those filmmakers who just wanted to tell a story of a boy becoming a man, and happened to catch all of the ground zero action, far removed from CNN and NBC cameras. Maybe it’s because that rookie fireman went from boy to man in same 60 minutes that it aired. Maybe it's just because I fantasize about firemen of any borough …
Well, not the Burbank variety.
I had a wreck a year ago that totaled my car, and I found myself strapped to one of those keep-your-spine-straight carrybeds and flirting with two of the fireguys in the ambulance. They were nice, not all of ‘em married, but all of ‘em in there with me … well, … let's just say, they clocked more hair gel time in the mirror that morning than I did.
And sure, I'm single, and sure, I’m in my thirties and craving what some single and not-so-single women crave in these days of metrosexuals, celebrity talking heads and keyboard infantrymen – A Real Man. Let’s face it – they’re all in Iraq or at a Brooklyn fire station. Granted, A Real Man might just be too much for this thinky girlwoman, but if I don’t build it, how will it come?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Does a fire station bring up or down the property value of surrounding homes?
Hm
m
m
m
m
m
m
m …..
There're just too many positives.
There’s the smell of phermones, sweat, smoke and PineSol.
The low guttural laughter of dudes hanging out together.
The spicy aroma of steak chili and gumbo simmering on the stove.
It’s gotta bring property values up, like a newly built elementary school. Candle-burning is up, you know, since the early 90s and our distractions, quadrupled. And a single woman in her thirties burns a lot of ‘em and busies herself doing anything to keep her from thinking about her single 30ness.
Who cares about property values? Hell, who really cares about values…
Anyway, it may seem impractical, this fantasy of loving and living with Brooklyn firemen. Couldn't hurt to bank the odds of my being saved from myself by a gorgeous Brooklyn firedude in suspenders and a hard hat.
I'm just sayin…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Most firemen are in pretty good shape, right? Eh, I don't really care, not too much.
Ok, maybe a little …
… maybe 25-lbs.-overweight care.
I think about Brooklyn firemen a lot.
I have a picture of them taped to my cubicle wall. It’s a photo of four of them gathered, full-on firemen helmets and suits, looking up at the building that was on fire in New York back in April or so of last year. An apartment building.
Anyway, I like to keep them near – Brooklyn firemen. I think it's smart – even from this distance.
Maybe when I move, I'll move next to a fire station. Maybe it's because of the 9/11 thing – I don't know. Maybe it’s because of that documentary about the Brooklyn rookie fireman by those filmmakers who just wanted to tell a story of a boy becoming a man, and happened to catch all of the ground zero action, far removed from CNN and NBC cameras. Maybe it’s because that rookie fireman went from boy to man in same 60 minutes that it aired. Maybe it's just because I fantasize about firemen of any borough …
Well, not the Burbank variety.
I had a wreck a year ago that totaled my car, and I found myself strapped to one of those keep-your-spine-straight carrybeds and flirting with two of the fireguys in the ambulance. They were nice, not all of ‘em married, but all of ‘em in there with me … well, … let's just say, they clocked more hair gel time in the mirror that morning than I did.
And sure, I'm single, and sure, I’m in my thirties and craving what some single and not-so-single women crave in these days of metrosexuals, celebrity talking heads and keyboard infantrymen – A Real Man. Let’s face it – they’re all in Iraq or at a Brooklyn fire station. Granted, A Real Man might just be too much for this thinky girlwoman, but if I don’t build it, how will it come?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Does a fire station bring up or down the property value of surrounding homes?
Hm
m
m
m
m
m
m
m …..
There're just too many positives.
There’s the smell of phermones, sweat, smoke and PineSol.
The low guttural laughter of dudes hanging out together.
The spicy aroma of steak chili and gumbo simmering on the stove.
It’s gotta bring property values up, like a newly built elementary school. Candle-burning is up, you know, since the early 90s and our distractions, quadrupled. And a single woman in her thirties burns a lot of ‘em and busies herself doing anything to keep her from thinking about her single 30ness.
Who cares about property values? Hell, who really cares about values…
Anyway, it may seem impractical, this fantasy of loving and living with Brooklyn firemen. Couldn't hurt to bank the odds of my being saved from myself by a gorgeous Brooklyn firedude in suspenders and a hard hat.
I'm just sayin…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Most firemen are in pretty good shape, right? Eh, I don't really care, not too much.
Ok, maybe a little …
… maybe 25-lbs.-overweight care.
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