How Not To Be Seen

I got sick last Friday and stayed home from work. I don’t know if I was authentically infected with something, or just suffering from extremely bad allergies, general exhaustion, and a profound lack of will power. But there was no rousing me from bed all that day.

That night, I stayed up late working on a “steam punk” costume for Alli, for a wedding she would attend Saturday morning.

The awful truth is, I don’t absolutely love these super-cute themed social activities. It sometimes seems like a lot of childless folks treating their existential ennui with tossed-off arts-n-crafts.

Worse, they often strike me as somewhat self-congratulatory. Like, “Look how clever and creative we are! Take another picture. Facebook will love this!” Like, folks proudly taking the path less traveled by walking continuously one foot to the left of the more traveled path. Like, everyone making boat-rocking gestures while staying as stone-still as possible. “But it looks like I’m rocking the boat, doesn’t it? It looks like it? From a distance? From the pictures on Facebook?”

On the other hand, I do absolutely love to make things, and I needed to treat my existential ennui with some arts-n-crafts, so I made the costume. I’m happy with how it came out, and now I can post it on the Facebook and hope I get congratulated on how creative and different I am.

Gosh, I do have fun. Don’t I? I have the most fun!

Then, Saturday, I slept late to continue recovering, I did chores, and I watched a Monty Python documentary to raise my creative spirits.

Sucks ’cause, instead of raising my spirits, it reminded me how far from my goals I presently am. It put me squarely back into my grade-school mindset, reminded me of what I wanted when I started out. And now, it seems, I haven’t only compromised on where I’ve landed, I’ve compromised on what I permit myself to dream, on what I permit myself to chase.

Why am I not pulling together big projects anymore? Why am I not assembling teams? Why am I not arguing against lowered expectations?  Why can’t I think of a way to beat this creeping normality? Why am I surrendering to normal life?

So, then, all fired up with those thoughts, I spent Sunday with Barb, doing nothing. Went to a nice lunch, shopped a little, lay around the house, went to the grocery store. Monday, I got up extra early and had the oil changed in my car. I watched some Good Day LA, which is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I went to work early, to remedy all the panic created by my Friday absence. And all week long, I was overwhelmed with too much responsibility at work, covering for my absent bosses.

You know, normal life.

Traffic On Your Parade

In LA, we have no weather. It’s sunny and warm almost all of the time. For the most part, the weather is predictable and reliable. It’s so agreeable, I’ve mostly forgotten that weather is a thing that happens.

And thus, having been denied that outlet to deliver its reminders, here, it is instead through the traffic that the Universe makes its indifferent and chaotic nature known.

The weather is almost always nice, so the Universe orchestrates the traffic to shout: “I’m still capricious and cruel, folks – and don’t you forget about it!”

What a lousy drive. How much longer can I tolerate a life that it this bare-faced random, this coldly arbitrary? A person deserves the illusion of meaning and sense! If the traffic can’t even bother to put on a show of making sense, well, then … I’ll do something, I tell you.

I will do one hell of a something.

Spoons and Monsters

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Hey, Coffee Shops

Yeah, coffee shops, I’m talking to you. Particularly coffee shops in the vicinity of Century City. It’s swell that so many of you are open at 7AM. It’s fantastic that you have nice furniture with comfortable workspaces and free wifi.

But this is Los Angeles. If you put a sign in your tiny parking lot that says parking is limited to, say, 20 minutes, or hell, even 45 minutes, then I can’t spend my morning there, working and buying your coffee and snacks, now can I? And thus, I end up at Norm’s. Where the spoon is a different length every day.

You’d think they’d have bought the spoons in bulk.

What’s Up With the Finger?

Yesterday evening, when I arrived home, the power was out in my building . I walked Bacon and checked out the neighborhood. I took some pictures of LADWP cones and broken electrical pipes, but there were no trucks or crew-persons to photograph.

When I returned to building, many of the neighbors were out in the hall, because they were desperately bored, having already been deprived of their television and internet for an eternity lasting upwards of forty minutes.

The halls were very dark. It’s a bit of a walk in my building, from the entrance to my door. And on my floor, there lives a gigantic mammal. She appears to be part Dalmatian, part Great Dane, part Prehistoric Hippopotamus. She is energetic and nosy and, as best I can tell, entirely unspoiled by human discipline. This is probably the hippo in her.

She is also spotted, which is the Dalmation, and has floppy jowls and big pointy ears, which is Great Dane. I believe her name is Bella. Barb said she thought it might be Stella. In any case, her head comes up to my shoulders, her ears come up to my chinny-chin-chin, and yesterday, she heard Bacon and me, in the dark – and she motherfucking chased us down.

ACTUAL SIDE-BY-SIDE PHOTO

From behind us, an earthquake, a rain of slobber, and then, mouth open, she pounced on Bacon. I don’t think she meant us any harm, but all the same, she hit a lot of us with her teeth. And when I say she was on top of Bacon, I mean completely. Bacon fit nicely in the space between her front and back legs.

As the animal jumped and swatted around, I could hear her female owner shouting “Bellaaaa! Belllaaaa!” over and over again. This did not have any notable effect on Bella. Perhaps because her name is Stella?

There was a tangle of leash and arms and dog faces as I tried to keep marching, in the total dark, all the while attempting to extricate Bacon from under this creature worthy of its own constellation. It was impossible to tell whether a sincere fight was about to erupt. My hand really stung, and it was slobbery.

Eventually, I got Bacon out from under Bella, and held him in my arms as I marched on. Stella trotted along at my side, her head at my shoulder, looking down on Bacon in my arms.

When I reached my door, there was a strange woman and a bald man, also strange, standing outside my door with paperwork. They said, “Do you live here?” And I said, “Yes,” and then I darted inside and shut the door. I left the giant out there with them. They could fend for themselves.

The power was out, so I couldn’t examine my injury very well. I tried to hold it near a tea-candle, but the candle blew out. And soon enough, the strange people were knocking on the door behind me. Which meant, Bacon started running around to alert me to this fact. Bacon believes I am deaf.

The knockers were not screaming for help, but I couldn’t be sure they weren’t in league with the monster, so I put Bacon in Alli’s room and opened the door.

It turns out, the strange pair wanted me to sign a petition to prevent the raising of the maintenance fee at the condo. This struck me as strange – refusing to pay 10% extra to maintain the building while, at that very moment, the power was out in what appeared to be only our building alone.

I explained that I only rented. She explained that I could sign anyway. So I went out and I signed it in the green light of the EXIT sign.

The story ends a few minutes later, with Barb and me lighting candles and digging out the flashlights. At last, I could examine my hand, which, it turns out, had a bright blood blister, just in front of the nail, on the tip of the pinky finger. It stung and it smarted, and it still does.

Also, on the same hand, the pinky finger was the only one left. All the rest were bloody stumps.

A few hours later the power came back on.