Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Wake Up Call
Again I wake up to the house rattling knock of my neighbor. "Hi Honey, did I wake you up again... Wish I could sleep in, I didn't get to sleep until 3:00 am... anyway Honey I was wonderin' if I could borrow ten dollars, I'm outta cigarettes." I give her two dollars and she wanders back over to her house saying something about having some change and figuring something out. I feel bad. I lied. I had about five dollars in my purse (now three). But I'm sick of always giving her money. It's not like I have a lot of it. She never, ever pays me back. Ever. Plus, the money is probably for booze- and maybe for some cigs. I am spineless.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Ice Coolers and Abandoned Shopping Carts
I let my neighbor use my pool when I'm at work. Let me back up. My neighbor started using my pool when I was at work, and then he asked me if he could use my pool and I said yes. He is a sweet man. He brought me a palette of individually wrapped breakfast muffins for my birthday. He and his wife babysit their 1.5 year old granddaughter most days. Some mornings I am awakened by a loud, impatient rapping on my security door. It is the wife. She carries with her a cloud of alcoholic vapors. When she knocks I know she wants one thing. Money.
Monday, August 11, 2008
You Are Here
At this point you are probably wondering why I don't just move- if I hate Tujunga so much. Well, it's more complicated than that. And I don't necessarily *hate* Tujunga. I just find it different from what I'm used to. So have patience with me while I figure this town out (figure myself out).
Saturday, August 9, 2008
780 square feet of bliss
I owned a 780 square foot, one bedroom condo in South Pasadena. It was way too small for me and my growing obsession with painting and the walls were paper thin. I sold the condo and moved to Tujunga. South Pasadena is an idyllic town, full of coffee houses and beautiful tree lined streets. I have to stop myself from mooning over it every single day. It seems that my heart still lives there. Sometimes I think I moved to Tujunga in a manic frenzy- without thinking about what I was leaving behind. The rush of moving was all engrossing. It wasn't until after the moving van pulled away and all was quiet that I'd realized what I'd done. I stood in my living room that first Saturday in horror as the neighbor across the street started his mini street racing motorcycle and began doing donuts.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Toothless Neighbors and Government Cheese
When I chose this town, I wasn't quite in my right mind. I see that now. That, or my realtor slipped ecstasy tabs into my Diet Coke as we drove around the sidewalkless streets that rainy May a year ago. I had looked at other towns; Altadena, Alhambra... all of the places that I could afford, and none of them spoke to me. In retrospect, maybe I should have listened a little harder to what those cities were saying before I slapped my fortune down in good old Tujunga.
I came from a middle class family. My father was a public high school art teacher and my mother was a part time public school teacher. How I became such a locationally confused person, I'll never know. Maybe it has to do with living in such poverty each summer and also constantly living so far beyond our means. There is confusion and hazard inherent in growing up in a household in debt.
I grew up at the beach in the Hollywood Riviera in Redondo Beach. It's not like it sounds. I was pale and freckled and fat. Classmates threw eucalyptus pods at me in disgust and anger while we waited at the bus stop. That's how not user friendly I was. My parents fought about everything. I cried all the time. They stopped their fighting to yell at me for crying. I'm trying to give you the big picture. I'm also trying to figure out how I ended up here in Hillbilly and NeoNazi Heaven. I'm going to trust that pitching this out there will lead me to some sun dappled path's end.
I have a brother. He is older than I am by six years. When I was very young, I used to think he looked like one of the Beatles. It's because he used to wear his hair longish in the front. Everybody did in the early 70's. He used to skateboard all over the place. In 1976 we both, along with my little sister, got our pictures in a skateboard book. We thought we were pretty hot. I skateboarded because my brother did. I did everything he did. I wanted to be around him all of the time. One time I asked him if I could hang out with him and his friend Chris. He said I could if I skateboarded around in the street in only my underwear. I retreated from his bedroom and thought about it for a very long time then I declined his offer. I was completely disappointed in myself.
I have a younger sister. She got shot in the wrist when we were walking home from school one day. I heard the air rifle go off. It sounded like a rubber band being snapped. We hated this hill. It was steep and seemed to never end. It was hot that day. One minute we were walking up our hill and the next minute she was looking at her wrist and blood was starting to pulse out of it. She began to cry. I had a dirty old blue bandanna in my backpack. I found it and tied it around her wrist, more to hide the wound from my eyes than anything else. I held her wrist and we started walking up the hill again. A boy on his bike came riding up alongside us. I knew him from school. He was a few grades older than I was. He said, "What's wrong?" or "What happened?" and I gave him a wicked squint and said "you know". And he did know. That bee bee came straight out of his house on that hill and hit my sister in the arm- traveled right up the vein in her arm and was headed for something important is all I knew.
The detectives came to our house. They asked us what happened. They were dressed nicely. They were young. They would tell us that my sister was shot with an air rifle and the boy who did it hid the rifle in his closet. His mother was very upset. His brother was a quarterback at USC. That was the big deal. That was all my mother talked about. "Your sister got shot by the brother of the quarterback from USC!"
The detectives and my parents kept telling me that I had done a good thing by tying the bandanna around my sister's wrist- that I had created a tourniquet and had helped to stop the bleeding (this was before the tourniquet had fallen out of favor as a means of stopping bleeding). I never intended to do this. My sole intention was to cover the wound so my sister (and I) wouldn't have to see the blood anymore and to probably sop up the blood. But man, I ran with the whole tourniquet thing. I didn't deny it, I just nodded my head and drank it in. And I felt like a heel. To this day I feel guilty for taking credit. I did not create a tourniquet on my sister's arm that day. I just didn't want to see the blood. Case closed.
Or is it. Could my fear and disdain for shady thugs come from that sole incident? Perhaps. Or maybe there's more.
I came from a middle class family. My father was a public high school art teacher and my mother was a part time public school teacher. How I became such a locationally confused person, I'll never know. Maybe it has to do with living in such poverty each summer and also constantly living so far beyond our means. There is confusion and hazard inherent in growing up in a household in debt.
I grew up at the beach in the Hollywood Riviera in Redondo Beach. It's not like it sounds. I was pale and freckled and fat. Classmates threw eucalyptus pods at me in disgust and anger while we waited at the bus stop. That's how not user friendly I was. My parents fought about everything. I cried all the time. They stopped their fighting to yell at me for crying. I'm trying to give you the big picture. I'm also trying to figure out how I ended up here in Hillbilly and NeoNazi Heaven. I'm going to trust that pitching this out there will lead me to some sun dappled path's end.
I have a brother. He is older than I am by six years. When I was very young, I used to think he looked like one of the Beatles. It's because he used to wear his hair longish in the front. Everybody did in the early 70's. He used to skateboard all over the place. In 1976 we both, along with my little sister, got our pictures in a skateboard book. We thought we were pretty hot. I skateboarded because my brother did. I did everything he did. I wanted to be around him all of the time. One time I asked him if I could hang out with him and his friend Chris. He said I could if I skateboarded around in the street in only my underwear. I retreated from his bedroom and thought about it for a very long time then I declined his offer. I was completely disappointed in myself.
I have a younger sister. She got shot in the wrist when we were walking home from school one day. I heard the air rifle go off. It sounded like a rubber band being snapped. We hated this hill. It was steep and seemed to never end. It was hot that day. One minute we were walking up our hill and the next minute she was looking at her wrist and blood was starting to pulse out of it. She began to cry. I had a dirty old blue bandanna in my backpack. I found it and tied it around her wrist, more to hide the wound from my eyes than anything else. I held her wrist and we started walking up the hill again. A boy on his bike came riding up alongside us. I knew him from school. He was a few grades older than I was. He said, "What's wrong?" or "What happened?" and I gave him a wicked squint and said "you know". And he did know. That bee bee came straight out of his house on that hill and hit my sister in the arm- traveled right up the vein in her arm and was headed for something important is all I knew.
The detectives came to our house. They asked us what happened. They were dressed nicely. They were young. They would tell us that my sister was shot with an air rifle and the boy who did it hid the rifle in his closet. His mother was very upset. His brother was a quarterback at USC. That was the big deal. That was all my mother talked about. "Your sister got shot by the brother of the quarterback from USC!"
The detectives and my parents kept telling me that I had done a good thing by tying the bandanna around my sister's wrist- that I had created a tourniquet and had helped to stop the bleeding (this was before the tourniquet had fallen out of favor as a means of stopping bleeding). I never intended to do this. My sole intention was to cover the wound so my sister (and I) wouldn't have to see the blood anymore and to probably sop up the blood. But man, I ran with the whole tourniquet thing. I didn't deny it, I just nodded my head and drank it in. And I felt like a heel. To this day I feel guilty for taking credit. I did not create a tourniquet on my sister's arm that day. I just didn't want to see the blood. Case closed.
Or is it. Could my fear and disdain for shady thugs come from that sole incident? Perhaps. Or maybe there's more.
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