I’ve watched a thunderstorm in a glasshouse
My 4th year in Los Angeles.
I’m sitting under my bougainvillea writing you this letter. I live in Hollywood, as most of you know. 4 years ago, on August 17th, 2020, I moved to Los Angeles. In my journal entry from that day I wrote, what’s it called when something happens before it’s supposed to? I’m referring to leaving New York, something that now I can see from my purview, was never going to be an easy place to leave. Then I wrote, sometimes I think I live through my memories too much, right now I think it’s okay.
When I left New York, my life in there had been ripped basically to shreds. I had run up the well of asking for help. My friends were sad to see me leave, but sometimes I wonder if they were happy to see me go, hoping I'd grow up once and for all in another place– away from them. I remember my first year in Los Angeles like a bad dream, they call those nightmares. I carried all my shit with me to Los Angeles, obviously, your problems will just follow you wherever you go etc etc.
I wandered aimlessly through my entire first year here. I remember waking up from a nap on January 6, 2021 to the capitol being stormed by a riot. I looked at the news and then proceeded to get in my car and take a selfie in a Museum of Peace and Quiet hoodie (clearly still figuring out how I wanted to dress). It actually is alarming to look back on that version of myself, so preoccupied with my own feelings and sadness that I can’t even for a second look at the world around me. I took another photo of the sky that night, like I did on most nights. Gross and disgusting and sorry to be a cliche of that woman. My narcissism was at an all time high because I had never been more insecure. I started sleeping with a guy who would only have me over at 11pm and would only have sex with me with the lights off. After we finished, he’d tell me to leave. I had never felt like less cool of a person, but at least I was being validated by someone. Historically, I have always felt validated by men who want to have sex with me, no matter how badly they treat me.
When the Civilization newspaper came out in March of 2021 including The Cosmic Map of New York City, I immediately had it shipped to me in California. The centerfold was a so-called map of about a hundred names of those who occupied and influenced the scene of downtown New York at that time. When it came I read every single name and examined it carefully with my friends over dinner. I read it over and over hoping to find my name each time. I knew there was no reason I’d ever see my name on something like this, I wasn't anyone. At that time I was just someone's girlfriend, and barely. I only knew the names of people who he introduced me to. (To my credit, some of them I knew from my brief stint in being interested in fashion in 2017.)
I was so concerned with being cool that I had forgotten about everything in my life that made me who I truly was. I started writing really bad poetry around this time, what else does a girl do when she's miserable? (it’s a right of passage) During that time, I opened up to someone who I thought was a friend. I invited him over for dinner in April. He made me spaghetti pomodoro and then proceeded to assault me on a velvet couch in my living room.
Something I have done before and I did it again then, was undermine the fact that another man had violated my body. I didn’t come to terms with any of it until recounting the experience with my therapist. This was a pattern for me at that time. I went back to New York that summer and tried to force myself into places that I really had no interest in being in in the first place. I thought I wanted to be a certain kind of cool downtown person, but I realize now that I am not that, and I don't have to be that in order to be respected.
Last Wednesday, Gena Rowlands died so I took the long way home. I drove up La Brea with all my windows down and turned right on Hollywood Boulevard. I thought about what Tennesse Williams and Sidney Lumet said of Gena (in that order),
We have to be witnesses to each other– all of us– bit particularly among artists…I believe in loyalty toward those who have given so much to our lives without the benefit of social or sexual intersource–artists who have endowed us with their souls. We must be loyal to them. Show them respect. Spread the word. Be a witness. I’ll give you a list, and the first name is that of Gena Rowlands.
The highest compliment I can pay to her–to anyone–is that the talent frightens me, making me aware of the lack of it in so many and the power that accrues to those who have it and use it well. And the talent educares and illuminates. She is admirable, which can be said of only a few of us.
In my astrocartography map, the moon line goes through California. The moon line is said to run through places where people may feel at home. This makes sense to me, being it’s the place I feel the most comfortable being myself. I've driven up Highway 1 all the way to Big Sur, and past Big Sur to Mendocino. I saw the color blue for the first time last August. Blue like purple. Purple like you. Purple like the sky right before the moon is highest in the sky. Purple like blackberry blue. I’ve flown over all the mountains and looked out at the orange below me. I have seen Hollywood Boulevard, Venice Beach, Malibu county line, Ojai, Palmdale. I’ve overheard conversations you wouldn’t believe. I’ve walked on Glendale Boulevard where I met the love of my life. I’ve wept on the phone in the Hollywood flats with a rehab facility in Arizona. I’ve cried long nights away while not thinking of anyone but myself. I’ve watched a thunderstorm in a glasshouse. These things might seem mundane to all of you, and like I'm romanticizing the most childish of things. I guess that's what I'm doing. I think of my memories constantly– maybe too much. I struggle to live in the present moment, until I remember that it will soon in about 5 minutes be a memory, and then I will cherish it even more. Then I remember that Tennessee Williams wrote in The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore,
Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?
I always worry I'll run out of things to write about, and then I remember I can always write about California.
Can we go again? Under the rainbow parachute, count to ten, fly high, underneath the world. There is no red here. Thank you blue. White blue skies, half moon. Call your phone, leave a voicemail. A tone of peace, a ringing in my ear. Once I longed for chaos, hysteria, a part of me. I look up, I see green. I never thought of brown like this. The ground holds my feet with hands. At home he waits. Actually, I fell asleep waiting to be saved and then it’s too late. I sunk the ground beneath me. In my dream you turn away, I curl up waiting for something but nothing ever comes. I become the ground.
I want to always live like this. Conscious and present in every moment.
Admit it. All of us fall in love in minutes.
This was such a captivating read
This was so beautifully written and as a current New Yorker thinking about leaving gave me a lot to think about <3