when two is better than one

As iron sharpens iron, so one (wo)man sharpens another.



I've been spending a lot of time with my friend Ludmilla lately. Ludmilla is a fellow photographer, and while she feels like her photography skills are lacking, I assure you, they're not. In fact, I've seen my own eye as a photographer widen and develop since I've known her, simply by having her stand alongside, looking through her own viewfinder. The passion she has for her craft is infectuous -- always learning, always improving, and always doing -- nearly everyday (and it helps that I'm finally getting the hang of Christina's camera).

She also teaches me countless things about being open. She's from Brazil, and from what little I've experienced, Brazilian culture is anything but closed. Her joie de vivre and friendly charm lend a certain warmth and her lack of fear in approaching almost anyone crumbles off as little chunks of courage.

Let me tell you how funny this girl is. The other night we and her roommate Bryan were in a bar in Hermosa Beach, sharing a pitcher of Newcastle on account of it having also been her birthday last week, as she recounts the story of a cousin back home. This girl, being equally cheeky, gave some Swedish tourists a great phrase to seduce the Brazilian girls: "Viva o mamute," which if you're not up on your Portugese means, "long live the Mammoth!"

Okay, so maybe you had to be there to laugh out loud...

Anyway, yesterday we hit two Los Angeles area landmarks, those places that you visit once to say you've been there but don't make plans to return. The first of which were the Watts Towers, built by Simon Rodia, they remain the center piece of L.A.'s poor urban neighborhood. Virtually untouched in the riots of 1992, they still stand, triangular and jagged against the sky.



There wasn't a whole lot else around the area, save for the wafting of barbeque smoke and smells of grilled meat coming from the nearby front lawns. Driving through the towns of Watts and Compton was eye-opening. One forgets, because Los Angeles is so large, that so much of the city is not like the areas of Beverly Hill and Santa Monica and Westwood. Nearly deserted of pedistrian traffic, Wilmington Blvd. was rows of churches and squat little houses with bars kept tightly across the windows.

The gate to the Towers wasn't open, so we still had some photographic steam we needed to burn off. So next we went to Olvera Street, a small, open-air marketplace that stands on the edge of Chinatown, across the street from Union Station.



On the far side of the market is a plaza rung by stands selling pelates and fresh fruit juice with crema and we stopped to get a pair of churros, bursting with sticky sweet strawberry filling, a brief high after the grogginess of landing at home the night before at 4am.

They're fun, these photography outings. We are planning next on taking a trip to the Mojave desert to find the airplane graveyard -- which is exactly what it sounds like. Stay tuned...

350

I mention that number because this is the 350th post to this blog.

I feel as though I have just wrapped up two weeks of birthday celebrations, cleaning off my desk tonight into a variety of piles of cards, receipts, gift cards (an ingenious invention, by the way), and books. The crown of the material gifting came today, after a long day at work. I was putting the mail away when I realized that the FedEx package sitting by the mail slots had my name on it. I pulled the cellophane apart and inside was a canary-yellow messenger bag, the words In Estonia, I'm a ROCK STAR emblazoned on the flap!! For the life of me, I couldn't figure out who had sent this, but a note on the shipping slip came with a note from Nina, address in one Chicago, Illinois. Ah-ha, mystery solved! It was so sweet and unexpected -- not to mention eyecatching. It's big enough to hold my laptop, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to enlist another carry-all yet, as I feel as though I'd be cheating on the red bag I bought last year before my trip to Toronto. But as Rachel said tonight, I'm sure I'll be able to find a good use for it somehow.

In addition to all the stuff, it's been two weeks drenched in blessing and love -- parties, dinners, desserts, phone calls, emails, Flickr comments, the list goes on...I don't ever remember a year that so much well-wishing was lavished on me, birthday-wise. Birthdays in July were never fun growing up. Those kids fortunate enough to be born in school-attending months got balloons tied to the backs of their desk chairs, cupcakes or cake -- the entire class seemed to celebrate them for the entire day. A summer birthday? Well that was spent at home, with Mom and Dad and Erik, and maybe a friend or two if they weren't on vacation somewhere. Nice, but easy to take for granted. Mom would sit and at a certain point in the proceedings stop everything to tell the inimitable birth story -- one that was only interesting and repeatable because it involved me being two months early and having to spend the first few weeks of life in an incubator, a fact that Mom likes to point out exemplifies the "tough Hiiu attitude" that the women in this family are said to carry. I started early, I suppose. Erika made dinner on Monday, my proper day of entry to this world, and while they asked for that story, but I didn't remember enough of the details to tell it. I was almost tempted to phone up Mom and put her on speaker phone, before I recalled that she was out of town and unavailable. She now likes to refer to it as the "downward slope to 30," but to call it a downward slope is anything but charitable. Nor is it accurate, either. In my mind -- finally, time to get some wisdom under this belt! Mom herself said she didn't start to enjoy life, or "come into her own," as it were, until her 30s, and nearly all of the people of that age that I know are having a better time of life now than they did when they were my age.

God's been sending his well-wishes as well, answering prayer in very specific and comforting ways this week -- comforting because I sometimes pray for things, expecting God not to answer them or doubting that it even makes any difference, but after what's been happening in the past few days, it leaves me with little doubt that he is paying attention, and does answer, does respond -- not always the way I figure he will, but he does.

Anyway. It's now 1:30 in the morning. This post is for Rachel, who tells me she gets irritated when she checks my blog in the morning and there isn't anything new to read. Well, here you go. I'm really liking our Friday nights out, you know that?

Have a Seat

This chair seemingly came out of an Alice In Wonderland story. That is until the security guards chased me away.

Non Sequitur

Uttered by Grandizer last night as we sat in the dining room with the lights out, eating Popsicles because it was so freaking hot:

"Does anyone know where I can find a large bag of small plastic novelty bones?"

Little Miss Sunshine

Thank you. Thank you! Thank you!!

Thank you Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris and Michael Arndt for making a movie that made me laugh hysterically one minute and cry the next. Thank you for making a movie that had a shred of originality in sea of sequels and remakes and for making a movie that's not afraid to show the vulnerability of we humans, all while making me laugh so hard it was a silent glee.

A thousand times, thank you.

Ritual de lo Habitual

I remember hearing somewhere that it takes about forty days of doing something intentionally in order to turn it into a habit. Well I've decided to test this theory recently.

It started with the mouth. Due to a dearth of health care availability, I haven't been to the dentist in about five years, give or take. Because of this, taking care of my dental health has become essential, and about twenty-two days ago, I started a regime that included brushing twice a day, flossing once and mouthwash twice a day as well. I'm only half way to habitual, but I've already reaped the benefits of the daily doings. Most remarkably (okay, I think it's remarkable) is that my gums no longer bleed during flossings, which I thought was a sign that I was doing it wrong at first, 'cause when I first started, ouch it hurt.

Carrying that through, I began to think about writing and how I haven't, in the past, made that a habit. I haven't necessarily been a good steward of this gift that's been bestowed upon me. But like any other activity that requires the training of muscles, I realized that I needed to train the writing muscle as well. I knew other writers who put this principle into practice, but I hadn't really considered it seriously for myself because I always figured raw talent would turn automatically into discipline without putting the actual work in (not so). So I would sit down and expect myself to write perfect first draft opuses (not possible) and get frustrated when nothing would come, feeling stuck and/or overwhelmed.

But just like a runner isn't going to be ready for a marathon the first day he puts his running shoes on, I needed to stop expecting myself to come up with brilliant material, right away.

"Set your sights and chip away." -- Che Fu, Chains

So I've just finished up my second week of habit-forming writing. I get up a half-hour earlier than normal everyday, head to Synergy and just write for thirty minutes. It doesn't matter what comes out -- random musings, thoughts about the day before, pieces of short stories that take a whole week to unfold. Some days are tougher than others, some days feel like crap -- I've found that everyday, the first ten minutes are rough, but after getting over the hump, the thoughts and fingers fly.

So these days are conditioning. The self-imposed pressure has been replaced with a kind of delight that didn't exist before. They are reminders that, like love and like God and a lot of other things in life, I'm not always going to feel like writing, but in making the choice to do so, I'm allowing myself to be stretched, to be disciplined. Thirty minutes, at the risk of sounding like an infomercial, is really all it's taken for me to see this writing thing from a whole new perspective.

Who's Hungry?

On IM today:

Me: You wouldn't want to work at UTA, would you?
Rachel: No, it was on the UTA joblist. This job was for an actor/producer.
Me: Oh oh, I see. Ohmygosh, you'd have to give away your entire lunch!

uhh...

Me: I mean, life.

riiiiiight.

Remixes

Beautiful, isn't she? I shot this in Prague one very early, raining morning in an open air exhibit by Czech artist Olbram Zoubek, which you can read more about here.

I've been teaching myself Photoshop here at work during the less busy times. Recently I have stumbled upon the joys of the Gaussian Blur, and have gone back and "remixed" some of my favorite older photos that I felt could use a little kick.

You can see the entire set here.

life changing, eh?

Spotted at Synergy this morning -- A flier that proclaimed: Feng Shui CAN change your life.

Really? I'm sure it can, it'll certainly change the way the furniture is scattered around the living room. But stopping to think about it, just about anything can be life changing. The gravity of such change may vary -- for instance, the kind of toothpaste you choose could give you whiter teeth, but it probably will not have the deep impact, say the way changing your career or moving across the country or the onset of a life-threatening disease will change your life.

When you hear that mighty proclaimation, "it'll change your life," you always assume it's change for good, right? No one ever touts the benefits of a product that will change your life for bad. But that's the essence of adversiting, isn't it? That's because everything has the potential to bring a piece of happiness, it also just carries with it a double asterisk (**) level disclaimer, the fine print that not only will results vary, but they're not typical, either.

Sitter

Look at the glow of that lovely machine, reflecting golden off the wood floor of my bedroom...

Since Corey and Thomas are going to be in Chicago for a month, Corey needed someone to look after his G5 while he's away. Who am I to turn down this offer for a friend?



So Corey came over last night -- large, beautiful, silver computer in tow (and that hippo's name is Hubert, by the way). A tangle of wires, a quarter of a watermelon, and a bottle of wine later, I have one very sophisticated machine sitting on my desk. Actually, because our wireless set-up isn't strong enough for a signal to reach the G5, what I really have is the world's prettiest jukebox on my desk, complete with a subwoofer and two funky little speakers.



I pity you non-Mac users, I really do.

Reasons for not blogging

From a phone conversation had Saturday...

Me: So there was a car accident outside the house this morning.
Levon: Oh I know, I read your blog.
Me: Already!?
Levon: Yeah.
Me: And you didn't even leave a comment?

All is full of love

Lie very, very still. The air outside is muggy with humidity, the kind that even a fan in the bedroom can't cut through, as the curtains waft in light waves across the windows. The sweat trickles down the temple, the neck, the knees, everywhere. It's hot, this July, very hot. The kind of hot that makes everything grind to a halt. A lazy, dizzy hot that made my insides drowsy yesterday as I sat, sipping leftover sangria, dreaming of life as a fish, or at least life in an air conditioned apartment.

The leftover sangria was from a joint birthday party that Elizabeth and I threw at our house on Saturday night. Despite the threat of a rolling blackout, we packed the house full of people, fed them, gave them drink, and had a DJ spinning records in the corner of our living room. What an amazing feeling, seeing fifty people talking and dancing (and sweating) and having a good time, and they're all there just because you happened to emerge from a bleeding uterus a quarter of a century ago. We will use any old excuse to party, won't we? ;-)

About the time Michelle pulled out the cupcakes with the candles in them and the entire house sang happy birthday, well my heart nearly exploded. Thank you, all involved, for what ended up as the best birthday party in my (almost) twenty six years.

demon days

I was about to write about something else today, but as I was logging onto blogger, I heard the all too familiar screech of tires and crunch of metal coming from 6th street. Christina and I rushed to the dining room window to see a silver Mercedes in the middle of the road, her bumper crushed and dangling to the ground. It looked like twisted shrapnel. The driver's car was taking up most of the road and the old man whose Jeep she hit was trying to lift the bumper up enough for her to move it out of the way. Horns started honking though and cars began pulling angrily into opposite lanes of traffic to get around the break down. I ran out to our front walkway, standing next to Christina and our neighbor, Doug. To make the situation more chaotic, an ambulance and fire truck came tearing down 6th street, sirens blaring, responding to a call at the rehab clinic that's around the corner (man, you gotta love L.A. sometimes). The LAFD were nice enough to drop one of their guys off to help move the car out of traffic.

Right now Doug is still standing outside, talking to the woman who perpetrated the accident. The Los Angeles traffic situation is about as awful as you may have ever heard. You get a sense, while on the road, that you're driving amongst people who either have very little regard for life or who enjoy taking their own lives in their hands on a fast, daily basis. It happens it little ways, like last Saturday, as I was coming back home from Trader Joe's, and I sideswiped a car who was double parked. As I was squeezing between this illegally standing car and the oncoming traffic, I heard a kathunk! and found my passenger's side rearview mirror pressed up against the window, the glass missing. Oh shit, I thought, not again. I pulled over and got out of the car. The fellow who had been sitting in double parker was inspecting his own mirror, and as he found nothing objectionable to report to his insurance company, he walked over to me, and on the way he bent down and picked up my fully intact mirror that had fallen to the ground. As he handed it to me he smiled and with a whiff of condescension told me to slow down to get through traffic. I stopped short of reminding him that he was the one double parked and hence, in the wrong, but whatever. It's good that Dad's not around, 'cause he would have given me shit for that one. Dad was notoriously against my driving, going so far as to convince me to sell my car last year (you've all heard that story). I had been under the impression this whole time that he had made the suggestion in support of my Crossover efforts, but I found out just recently (while in Europe), that really he just thought I'd be better off without a car because he was appalled at the amount of vehicular trouble I could get myself into. Ahh, so now my poor confrontational skills make more sense.

But anyway, my accident last week was minor to the point of miraculous. Thank God, that thing could have been worse x100. Because worse x100 happens here all the time. Take today for example, where this woman is still waiting for the AAA man to tow her car, or the other night at about 1:00am, when another screech of brakes and crunch of metal occurred. That time it was a Range Rover who had plowed into the wall of the aforementioned rehab clinic. The intersection of 6th and San Vicente is a dangerous one. Traffic rushes up from Wilshire just to slow down at La Cienega or they cut across on 6th, trying to avoid the major snarls by creating new ones. And they're all in such - a - freaking - hurry. Slow down! Maybe Dad was on to something with this no car thing after all.

House on Wheels

Digging through the archive.
Outside Dufur, Oregon. October 20, 2005.

File Under: Ignorant American

Overheard at Synergy this morning: the setting -- two middle aged men, catching up on things. A loose paraphrase, but the key details are word-for-word.

Man 1: So when does he come back?
Man 2: July 28th.
Man 1: Oh wow, have you talked to him?
Man 2: Almost every day.
Man 1: And where are they, exactly?
Man 2: About thirty minutes outside Tokyo.
Man 1: So out in the country.
Man 2: Yeah.
Man 1: Is she teaching in Asian?
Man 2: No, she's teaching in English, but he's almost able to translate everything for her.
Man 1: Oh that's great that he can use it finally. 'Cause you know, here in L.A., I always thought, "man, he doesn't really have a chance to use his Asian."

a loosening of things

1. Recently, some unresolved issues with one of my roommates have been worked out. They've been hovering over our friendship for several months now, and things finally came to a head this weekend, followed by a very constructive conversation on Monday. There's a peace and openness to our interactions now that was not there before. Hoorah, what a relief. In speaking with her on Monday, I realized how much of the jaggedness resulted from simple misunderstanding, a lack of clear communication, and the misconception that neither one of us had the others' "back." That sounds simple enough, doesn't it? But it's one of the hardest things on earth, getting to the heart of these kinds of matters.


2. I started a new writing class yesterday, this one at a place called Wordspace, which occupies a tiny storefront in Los Feliz, across the street from a large mural comprised of Hollywood faces, including a 21 Jump Street-era Johnny Depp and a dashing Sydney Poitier. The class is smaller than last time, with only eight students -- how exposed we all are! I was considering bailing out of this class for financial reasons, but as I walked to my car last night I thought better of it -- the benefit will far out-weigh the economics of the situation. During class, I took a deep breath and read one of my in-class writing exercises aloud, something that I usually never do, but I wanted the rest of the class to feel at ease, to know that it's not so bad to be vulnerable after-all. One of the things that I'd wished we had done more of in Chris's class was sharing our work, out loud with each other, which we didn't really do until the end of that session. Anyway, last night's leap seemed to have worked. Later on, one woman mentioned that she'd regreted not reading her own work after I'd read mine.


3. A very unexpected phone call came through the mobile today from a buddy of mine I met on Flickr. We'd met up once before I went to Europe, and before he very suddenly moved to Seattle a couple of weeks ago. What a delight to be eating lunch, to hear the phone ring, say "wha, where's 206?" and hear a far away friend on the other end of the line. To my photography comrade: I don't know if you even read this thing, but cheers, dude.

Teenaged Wasteland

Let it be known: I've officially outgrown my hard rock phase.

I saw Pearl Jam perform live last night at the Great Western Forum. A little L.A. history for ya -- this is where the Lakers and Clippers used to play before the Staples Center was built. Ingelwood is still known as the "City of Champions," and I can't imagine how the town's economy has faired since the team sport migration. But, it's still a good venue for concerts.

I don't know much about Pearl Jam. I know they have a guy in their band named Stone and that their drummer used to play for Soundgarden (my band of choice in that grungy, Seattle-based pantheon). I remember the video for Jeremy and the only song of theirs that I really like is Evenflow. But I respect them as a band. They have routinely stood against things they believe unjust -- from Ticketmaster's "unfair" ticketing policies to the follies and foibles of our current Washington Administration. Their longevity and outspokenness is something that's not seen often in the music industry these days.

I could appreciate it musically, but still, the concert was a bit lost on me. There were so many blissed out fans there, screaming out every word to every song. And there I was, standing there with my hands in my pockets, bopping around as if I too were a loyal and devout disciple of Eddie Vedder. Truthfully, I went because my roommate had an extra ticket and my evening was clear, huh.

Despite my general ignorance of the band and the fact that Eliz and I had to literally dodge the marijuana smoke** rising up from the folks seated in front of us, the show definitely had some highlights. Tim Robbins (yes, that Tim Robbins) came out to perform an acoustic set with Eddie. I didn't know Robbins could carry a tune, but the song was, in a word, tuneful. The band also closed with a cover of The Who's "Baba O'Reilly" with the house lights up as Matt Cameron did his best Keith Moon impersonation. That was pretty rockin'.



**And about that marijuana smoke: there were so many young people smoking dope at this show. Am I naive to think that the majority of people my age do not do drugs? If the concert was any indication, the majority of them do. This makes me sad. Aren't young people supposed to be enjoying life, why go through it in a self-inflicted purple haze?

And basketball playing Nephilim as well.

I went to Mammoth Mountain for the 4th of July weekend, for the first time in two years. It was capital letter F-U-N fun. I would write more about it, but then again I'd rather just let you see some of the sights, besides, how much do you really want to hear about hiking and games of poker, roasting marshmallows, avoiding the black bears and yes, even hearing a group of ten-foot Nephilim play a game of night basketball (thanks to Dan for that one).

Anyway, a few visual highlights from the trip. These friends are the backbone, the up-and-runnings. They feel like home.


Mountains on the drive up -- from the car! What amazing color in the landscape.



Chris and Michelle in a very tackily dressed restaurant in Lone Pine. The names of famous people were scrawled in the wood and then burned in. Jack Palance had been there in the '60s and Gary Cooper's name graced the door frame. The food was "eh."



Nina, a seven-months pregnant Nina, making some phone calls.



The poker players. I love Mike's expression of concentration in this one. Maybe they're reminiscing about the time I took their money...Alas, I did not fare so well in these rounds.



David, stretching out after our rather paltry (even for 8000 feet) hike. Man, it was windy up on that hill.



The very beautiful Lake George.

File Under: Helpful Hints

I don't know about other owners of small, white Apple computers, but over time, my laptop has developed some stains on the wrist rest area (or whatever the technical term for it is). I guess perhaps I have dirty wrists, or there's some sort of reaction between the plastic and my perfume. I don't know. Also, until several minutes ago, I didn't know how to remove those stains. Even 409 didn't work.

But I just discovered what did. Ridiculously simple: a Sanford brand Magic Rub eraser, the same they've made since 1954, it says here on this little white piece of rubber. Amazing.