Fall Is Here (It's In My Hair)

It's fall here in Southern California. I can tell by the arrival of the Santa Ana winds, the hot dry days, the crystalline-clear air. And the smell of fall is here, which for me, during a Santa Ana event, is not the smell of apple cider or fallen leaves, but the smell of my own hair.

For years and years I've noticed that when the Santa Ana's come whipping in from the desert east, my hair gets a very specific scent -- not unlike the creosote of the desert, mixed with a flat, metallic tang that lasts for the duration of the wind. I think I've read that something funny goes on with the ozone level of the air during the windy days, and perhaps that's what I smell in my hair. (I should point out that I have extremely thick, curly hair, that easily traps strong smells anyway. I need to tie it back when flipping pancakes or bacon, or risk smelling like a Denny's all day.)

Like any good little bookish L.A. girl, raised on Joan Didion and The Doors and Dr. George Fishbeck hopping up and down with glee over the weather, I can't help but get excited during a Santa Ana. Well, excited isn't quite the word. Restless, is more like it. I'm always about 2 heartbeats away from "restless" most days anyhow, but during a Santa Ana, it's more urgent, and irritating, too.

Dig it:

Those hot dry winds that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. (Raymond Chandler)

Or,

Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.

Thank you, Joan.

Perhaps that's why I've been feeling that bitter mix of wanderlust and trapped-out-here-in-the-godforsaken-Inland-Empire discontent so keenly this month. Growing up so close to the heart of Los Angeles, I sometimes miss it terribly. I miss feeling part of the action, part of that "scene." I'm a born and bred L.A. county native, and it's home that I miss right now.

I've leave off with Mr. Mojo Risin' himself. It always felt like he was singing this part straight to me, as I cranked up the radio and sped down the freeway in my primer-gray little Nissan, a cigarette clenched in my left hand:

I see your hair is burnin' /
Hills are filled with fire/
If they say I never loved you /
You know they are a liar.

Oh, it's all such a cliche! And yet, that doesn't make it hit any less close to home.

Ding Dong, September's Dead

October 1st. And my first blog post in well over a month. Shame on me, you say? Where was I?
I was deep in the mire of September, a month long bad spell that literally started on the first day of the month, with a fever and chills and bad things going on in the plumbing department, and literally ended yesterday, the 30th, with a doctor's follow-up visit with good blood test results and the assurance that I would likely live for at least another few months. Kidding on that very last part, but you know what? Not by all that much, when the blood work was for a CEA level test...also known as a tumor-marker test, tumor as yes, in cancer, and, well fuck.

That was September. All bloody month long of it. Now, on October 1st, I exhale: breeeaaaathe. In. Out. Slowly. Repeat.

Somewhere in September on an afternoon while trying to distract myself from dark thoughts, I tuned in to "Oprah." Oprah was featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, long lean and blonde Mrs. Chris Martin herself. In between talking about how much she just loved to eat and scarf and eat some more, Gwyneth talked about her mild post-partum depression after her second child (Pear? Kumquat?) was born and how a long, wine-soaked dinner with Madonna helped her to get better. Madonna says (and you know how I myself love to just throw that phrase around in mixed company: "Madonna says..."), anyway she believes that when this sort of psychic or emotional break occurs for whatever reason, the universe is trying to tell you something. (That Madonna! She's a wise one. And we should listen to her, because of, y'know, that cabalah stuff, and also the dedication shown in those very, very lean and sinewy upper arms.)

Which of course gots me to thinking...what the hell, universe? WTF? What do you want me to do? I've already had enough illness and hospitals and death and grief over the last couple of years to teach me the whole "every day is a gift," thing. Universe, I am SO down with that part. I get that.

But no, it turned out, over the course of several days of deep thought, that this time the universe is whispering a different message. And you know what that message is? The Universe says....



Grasshopper, it is time to write.

To which I responded, "ah, shit, Universe. Not that. Nope. Can't. Do. That."

And the universe retorted, "Can't? Or don't want to?"

And I was all like, "No, really. Can't. Just....no. How about....yoga? I think increased flexibility and stamina as I turn 40 would be very beneficial. Yes?"

The universe only crossed its arms and gave me that look.

"But, but, but..." said I, and I admit, it came out a little whiny.

This is what you are meant to do, the Universe intoned, and walked away. Discussion over.

Aw, man. I hate losing an argument. And don't think I still don't have my stockpile of excuses and protests at the ready. Still. I'm giving it some thought. I have some ideas, some thoughts, that have been kicking around up there for a long time. There is a lot of ice to break up with my ax, to steal the phrase that writing should work as "an ax to break the frozen sea within us."

But where to start, and how, and lord, most especially, when?

And the universe pops around the corner where he was probably hovering, to reply, and not a little smugly, "please, how many times have you read that book? You remember what the lady says:

Bird by bird, sister. Bird by bird.

(And a quote from the same lady, which seems particularly apropos in this dicey, freighted political climate: "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.")

Palm Springs Print

Once again, I've fallen behind on the "nesting"-type posts. Although, really, when I think about it, the kitchen overhaul was such a major, major thing that maybe that makes up for all nesting posts through the next year or so.

Speaking of the kitchen, we're right now in the midst of tiling the back splash with our aqua glass tiles from Susan Jablon. Hoo-boy. It's a job, and I'm sorry to say that it's hardly been "my" project at all, like it was supposed to be. No way could I be doing this without Myk's help -- the measuring, the scoring & cutting the glass tiles -- but it looks good so far, and I'm proud that at least we didn't have to pay a contractor to come and do it. Pictures to follow soon.

Anyway, back to the P.S. print -- I bought this straightaway the moment I found it after following a link to Jason Hill Designs on Etsy. Love it -- love the colors, which really pop, especially that orange. It's going to look really good when that wall below the cabinet also gets tiled.

Also, those blinds? Hate 'em. I meant to buy the lighter-colored, slightly patterned bamboo matchstick kind that you see everywhere in design mags. But Myk made a bit of a face at them, and swayed my mind -- and also, I was a bit desperate to throw up any blinds on the bare windows. These need to be gone though, and soon. They're almost completely transparent at night, too. Luckily, they didn't cost much at all.

So many things always on the ever-shifting design to-do list!

Less Than 2 Hours

One of the things that I like about living here in southwest Riverside County is that we're so close to many other locales and getaways. In just about over an hour (depending on traffic), I can get back to Orange County or out to my family in Whittier, or down to San Diego. This helps to make life a little more interesting, for as nice as it can be here, it still often seems that there's precious little to do on the weekend. (I've been told a good fix for this problem is to get the children very involved in a sport, and then my weekends will be claimed and accounted for through the next 10 years. )

Add another hour to the trip, and things can get truly interesting -- for in just about 2 hours or less, we could be in Palm Springs, or up in the San Bernardino mountains, or out to the apple orchards of Julian, or even, I suppose, down south into Mexico.

2 of our getaways this summer were to Palm Springs, and up to Crestline/Arrowhead, in the S.B. mountains. The Palm Springs trip was a rare adult getaway, to celebrate our 11th anniversary. The mountain trip was just last weekend, and we camped with 3 other families at the Dogwood campground, between Crestline & Arrowhead.

This is where we stayed in Palm Springs:
The photos above were taken when my camera was accidentally set to this 1-color mode, and so half of our P.S. pictures look like this. Sort of cool and artsy, I think. But here's a shot of the true colors of the desert, and of our stay:

And this is half of me & Lily, up in the mountains:
This is actually part of a nice family shot, but I wanted to focus on the scenery itself -- here, we're up about 8,000 feet in elevation, at Keller Peak. There's a fire-lookout tower there that we climbed, and at the top, in addition to the awesome views, was a flock of very active hummingbirds, darting and diving for the feeders hanging way out there on the edge of the world.

Tomorrow begins the first day of the school year here in our district. I can't believe I'm the mom of a first grader. The summer flew -- well, summer itself will technically still be here for a good while -- but you know what I mean. We did parks and beaches and Las Vegas and tent camping and a sleep-over or two, board games and computer games and even a trip to the dreaded Chuck E. Cheese.

Busy days. But sometimes it was nicest to stay and play in our own little plot of backyard.
Despite everything I've written here, I'm still a might confused as to how we've blown through half of August already. I'm hoping to post a wee bit more often -- I'll have 2 days a week nearly completely to myself, what with Tucker in preschool -- and somewhere in between all the bon-bons and afternoon trysts and soap operas, you'd think I could squeeze in the blog now and then.

We'll just have to see.

Shadow Dads

Look, it's me. Where the heck did I disappear to, you may (or not) be wondering? I meant to do a little vacation slide-show here first as my welcome-back, but all my pictures aren't uploaded yet.

So for now, I'll just say that earlier in the month, we were here.

And then just yesterday, I returned from an anniversary weekend here, with the hubby of eleven years.

In between that, there have been trips to the pool, various local parks and the beach:

That's my little guy, jumping for joy at being back at the ocean again. He tells me he wants to be a surfer, "when he's big." He's already getting so big. But I digress.

What I really came to talk about tonight was the last good book I read, a really terrific read called The Shadow Catcher, by Marianne Wiggins. I picked it up in the bookstore at the Mandalay Bay shopping mall in Vegas, which surprisingly has more good literary books and lit-vibe packed into its small walls than the big, Christian-heavy B&N here in my town.

So there was a lot to choose from, and several books that I picked up and put down again. But I came back to this one in the end. One of my favorite subjects to think about as a writer is the West, the mythical west of imagination and dreams, the one that Sam Shepard is also a native of. And this book is about that west, the west as a created, fictional place that was sold to Easterners way, way back before Hollywood was even a thought.

Again, in my very brief, non-book report way, I'll give a quick run-down.....

The novel is a twin narrative, first with the narrator, whose name just happens to also be Marianne Wiggins, who just happens to be a writer living here in So.California (the "real" Wiggins lives here and teaches at USC). In the opening chapters, we learn that the Wiggins character has written a novel about the life of the very real Western photographer, Edward S. Curtis. Curtis set out to document the West that was dying (or was perhaps even already dead) and the Native Americans who were disappearing from the landscape. Curtis was and remains a controversial figure, as it's up for debate as to whether he was truly honoring the Natives, or merely exploiting and romanticizing them.

The second narrative is a historical fiction, with the main character of Clara, the name of the woman who became Curtis' wife in real life. We get to know Clara, from an educated, artistic family, and how she travels west to the wilds of Puget Sound in the late 1800s and meets and marries Curtis, a poor and uneducated young man with big ambitions, who believes that Clara's role is to teach him all she knows, so that he can learn and travel forth in the world to explore the new art form of photography.

So the 2 narratives weave back and forth, with occasional black & white photos, many that are actually Curtis' works, interspersed throughout the text. But the real text, or subtext, of this book for me is the subject of fatherhood, and masculinity, and just how some men can behave like such rakes, and yet are revered and worshiped -- while the mother, back at home, takes the blame for all the faults and flaws of the marriage and family. I might know a thing or two about this, myself.

For Curtis left Clara and their children, to explore his mythical West, and to mythologize his own self within that West, as he hobnobbed with Teddy Roosevelt and the railroad barons who plowed down the landscape and the people for their own gains. Curtis took off, first for weeks, then months, and in the end for years at a time -- and yet it is he who is the revered one in the family lore. I might have a thought or two on that subject, myself.

To quote:

He became, by disappearing from their daily lives, not a father, but the myth of one, a myth they needed to believe in to survive. And despite his actions, despite all contrary evidence, they needed to sustain that system of belief, even if it meant altering their memory, creating a false memory, a false identity, of who their father really was.

Ah, yes. Again, something I might have a thought or two about. In addition to the shadowy dad of Curtis, Wiggins also writes about her own father (fictional or not) and how he disappeared one day, and was found years later, a suicide hanging from a tree in a state park. This part of the novel, and the mysterious man dying in a Vegas hospital with her father's ID and newspaper clippings about his daughter "Marianne Wiggins" found in his wallet, is probably the weakest (and most preposterous, in the end) but I still enjoyed the ride.

I also found it funny, a day or two after we'd returned from our own Las Vegas road trip, to be reading Wiggin's accounts of taking the same Vegas back-street shortcuts that we had, and describing Barstow and Baker (including a pit stop at the iconic Mad Greek cafe), as we'd just blown through, ourselves.

I should also mention that a large part of my connection and affection for the book stems from the fact that my dad, when alive, was an avid collector of many Western photographers, and spent quite a bit of money on old books, bought on Ebay, that he would show off to me when I'd be over for a visit. I feel a bit ashamed to admit that I can't quite remember if Curtis was one of the photographers he collected, although I'm 90% positive that he did. Next time I'm visiting my mom, I need to poke around in my dad's dusty closet and see what I can find.

In any case, I found the book a rich and layered read, one of the best of my year -- (again, a starred review in Publisher's Weekly) and it also made me miss my own shadow-dad terribly. I would have loved to talk about this book, and his books, with him. And, hello -- stop the freakin' presses, too: I just went to Wikipedia to include a link to Curtis' bio, and what do I learn, right there in the sidebar, but that Curtis, who was down on his luck in later years, went and died right in my hometown of Whittier in 1952! Just as my own dad did, not two years ago. Oh, it's all connected, you see?

Now for a mini-rant: I was appalled to learn as I read this Sunday's Los Angeles Times that they are eliminating all future editions of the Opinion pages, and the Book Review, and the Real Estate section -- all favorites to read with a cup of coffee and my peanut butter toast, and major reasons why I subscribe in the first place. God know what other small blurbs I missed, informing me of which other sections will be leaving. Is the much-shifting, ever-tweaked Magazine out of commission yet again, too?

For I probably would not have picked up Shadow Catchers, if I hadn't already read Wiggins' earlier novel, Evidence of Things Unseen, about an average Joe and his major love, set against the backdrop of the Atomic Era. And the reason I read and bought "Evidence," is that I'd been intrigued and inspired to pick it up, owing to the 2-page glowing review of it that appeared in the Time's Book Review a few years back.

You see how these things work, people? It's all connected, we're all connected, but how can it work if a major force and proponent of the literature of California and the West, as the Book Review has striven to be, is yanked from beneath our feet? For shame, for shame. Shall I tender my notice of cancellation? I can't decide if that would help, or hurt the cause of us blue-stockings, out West here in our flip-flops and denim shorts.

Easy to Please

OH, happy day.....
So this morning I'm making breakfast and watching the morning news on local L.A. station KTLA when they run a commercial for the
GIDGET 4th of July MARATHON.

!!!

I immediately started jumping up and down and pumping my fist, like my team just won the Superbowl or something. Well, yeah --- we kinda did, now that I think about it. The kids looked amused, and then a little alarmed, when I kept on jumping after the commercial was over. Then I grabbed the remote, and thanks to Tivo, watched it one more time.

C'mon man...Gidget! Gidget used to run on syndication in the late mornings some time back when I was either a senior in high school, or had just graduated and hadn't yet found a job. Gidget reminds me of warm summer days in our apartment as I watched with my little sister, nine years my junior.

We both loved the clothes, the sets, the silly escapades that Gidget always tumbled into each episode -- and oh, how we loved LaRue, her best friend. Gangly, awkward, nerdy LaRue, always scowling and sporting a huge, floppy hat against the summer sun as they sat on the beach, plotting their next move.

Gidget is quinessential California, starring Pasadena-born Sally Fields, and though this native Calif girl has never surfed (or wanted to) , Gidget is just way up there on my list of Favorite Things Ever.

Kudos to brilliant KTLA for knowing exactly what I needed to kick off the holiday and our summer getaway.

Have a happy 4th, and as Gidget says each time she hangs up her Princess phone: "Toodles!"