October 2008 - every weekend an adventure

Weekend the first:  
"Basic skills" tests not generally causing my heart to palpitate, I was too relaxed the morning of the CBEST and almost missed the strictly enforced start time.  The test itself was the piece of cake I had ordered, though I didn't chew it enough before swallowing.  The essay prompts were infantile - "tell a story of a success in difficult circumstances" - but I realized too late that perhaps I shouldn't treat them as such.  Sitting there, at a desk in my old high school, taking a test containing questions more appropriate for elementary school, I wondered then how I could inflict that 'education' on other people, even if they were just children still.

That night, I made a killer picnic dinner and Megan and Nate and I went to the Iron and Wine and Swell Season concert at the Greek Theatre.  It was brilliant!

Weekend number two:
Nicole and I went to the beach in Hermosa and bonded in a completely nonsexual fashion, as she was still with Guy-who-does-yoga-and-refuses-to-speak-to-her-now.  Cold night, but warm thoughts. 

Weekend III:
People had somehow convinced me to attend SoCal DeCom, a mid-sized(?) burner party about eighty miles east of San Diego, in the desert, just above the Mexican border.  I got intoxicated, stayed up most of the night, couldn't sleep during the day because of the heat, went shooting with a bunch of burners who really like their guns, went on little walks, bonded more with Nicole, saw a jackrabbit or two, and wandered off alone the second night there because it felt like the right thing to do.

Possibly best of all, on the second morning, I walked up a nearby hill as the sun was rising, found a circular pit full of animal bones, some charred, some clean, and then I took off some clothes and lay down on the cold, hard dirt, and napped as the world warmed up around me. 

The Fourth Weekend:
Nothing noteworthy apparently.  Must have slept through the whole darn thing. 

Halloween:
Not a proper weekend, it being a Friday and all, but it's worth mentioning that my sister and I threw a joint party full of pumpkins, food, punch, dry ice, and hot tubbing.  Fun had by all!

September 2008 - fall of expectations

I moved back into my parent's house just before Labor Day.  My immediate plan was to take the CBEST so that I might work as a substitute teacher for the next god-knows-how-long until everything else came into focus.  I registered for the test, looked at the study materials, laughed a hearty chuckle, and forgot about it all until the test date.

I also registered for my Birthright Israel trip, the first step in a process that would soon plop me down in the Holy-Landiest of Holy Lands.  I volunteered with Rebecca to read books to kids in a downtown elementary school, through a very fluffy organization called Reading to Kids.  I would have to be more engaged in the community if I was to be worth my salt on any meter.

Mostly, in September, I just tried to maintain, or rebuild, some of the motivation and independence I had felt in SLO.  Its hard to feel independent when you're living at your parent's place though, isn't it?  I began laying the groundwork to improve... like I do.

August 2008 - communication breakdown

August was my second month in SLO, trying to live he writerly lifestyle I had so long dreamt about.  In the end, that's exactly what I was living, without the writing.  It started with increasingly decadent and time-consuming meals.  Then I stagnated altogether, and thought I had to read more to become more inspired.  Then I realized I had never seen the Mad Max movies, and hadn't been eating enough pizza, or experimenting with enough ice cream and espresso combinations.  It was a slippery slope from there.

I spent more time hanging out with Jeremy and Erica and company, trying to not feel so isolated.  I suppose I have to admit the loneliness was getting to me.  There were parties, bike rides, wine tastings, nights out - all the usual items of a social life, restricted basically to two people.  We celebrated the End of the World on the evening CERN's new Large Hadron Collidor was turned on for the first time.  I went back to LA to bid farewell to Tara, as she left for San Diego to start a grad program.  Before I knew it, my SLO time was quickly running out, and I was due to be back in LA at the end of the month.  Jenny needed her apartment back and I had to move on to the next great experiment...the same one I had left 2 months prior.  Nothing.

But my last night in town was a fantastic one.  Jeremy and I rode the 10 miles to the beach and back, and then drank tawny port and ate bleu cheese while watching the Animation Show for the rest of the night.  I got very little sleep, woke up early to a real thunderstorm, threw my packed bags and boxes in the car, and made my last drive home.  Until the next time I had to run away from Los Angeles.  It happens frequently.

Running the Asylum

I just found the following as an old draft of an entry I never completed:

There is a lot to be said for being alone at work. Not all of it is good, but still, allow me to say some of it.

I'm alone, accountable only to my clients and to my myself. No oft painful small talk with peers, though no invigorating conversation or amusingly senseless banter either. No coordinating or compromising with coworkers, but neither do I get any real breaks. No cleaning up the messes of others, or at least less of that, but on the occasion I must do cleanup it does suck that the ruiner has left work and said mess long ago. For that matter, when I'm wrong, nobody is around to correct me, so I do the clients a disservice. 

That's all I wrote at the time.  I remember this last week of my hospital job.  I was working the night shifts alone at the mental health clinic, always an interesting time.  I, like my colleagues, made my office a small training room in the administrative building across the complex from the inpatient building.  This distance made it so that if a nurse truly had a problem, he or she could call me, but we would not be bothered by every trivial moment of doubt that flitted about the staff.  This was not the best way to do our jobs, but it was the best way to relax, stream movies online, read, or simply work on one's blog.

But yes, there is something eerie about being in a dark, empty building on the campus of a psychiatric hospital overlooking downtown Los Angeles (which is creepy enough on its own at 4am).  Your mind wanders.  It's hard to shut your eyes because you're just a tiny bit fearful that when you open them again the stillness will have shifted.  Then you'll have to wonder how and why and whom - or what - did the shifting...BOO!  And that's how it would happen, my second ghost story.

I miss the weirdness of that job.  I think about the back cover blurb on my copy of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying:  It told me that Faulkner wrote the novel over six weeks while working the night watch at a power plant.  I can't help but feel that's when the ghosts come.  That's where I ought to go to capture them, and weave them into the blank sheets of stories I haven't yet learned.

July 2008 - the SLO life

I moved into my new digs on the 2nd of the month.  I brought clothes, guitar, a couple of microphones, my computer, all my old writings, and not much else.  The first day I was there I went grocery shopping at the bottom of the hill at the organic food market, New Frontiers, and made sure to pick up a pack of cigarettes, a handle of gin, several small bottles of tonic, and a sackful of limes.  My mission, like my drink of choice, was clear.

Immediately upon arriving I had several ideas for what to do with projects I was working on.  I woke up, leisurely made breakfast, played guitar, got down to writing, had a drink, leisurely made dinner, read for a bit, went for a walk or a bike ride, etc.  Not that I stuck to a routine or anything.  Such a thing would have reeked of work and discipline.  Those were the typical elements of any given day, and they came and went as they pleased.

I kept a journal of my work.  Each night I would record what I had worked on that day, how much I had accomplished, and remember to myself any ideas I might have had about new projects or how to advance current ones.  I can see from my record keeping that in my first week there I wrote about 9,000 words over 3 projects.  I also had a nice day at the beach on the 4th of July, which ended with fireworks at a parent's beach house in Pismo.

Mid-month I was back in LA visiting my grandma and taking care of unemployment business, but after less than a week of that I ran straight back north and go to writing again.  I hosted my first couchsurfer, Olly, from England but making his way home from Korea at the time.  Before the end of the month I had started a new project, completed an old one, and made good headway on a couple in between.

Of course, by then I had discovered the television and Asimov's Foundation novels, so there days when I simply cooked, ate, read, watched a movie, talked to a friend, drank, smoked, and went right back to bed, sometimes without ever having put on real pants.  I was a writer!  I just had to write more...