venice_diaries

 Happy belated birthday to you.

 "Hi, America.  I'm your new President.  Let's all grow the fuck up, shall we?"

( Tabletop gamers only. No reason that the rest of you should suffer. )

Happy Birthday to annanda111 , my ex-wife and current close friend.  You've known me longer than anyone up here, you've seen me at my worst and at my best, and yet somehow we can still enjoy each others' company in joy and happiness.  May the upcoming year bring you nothing but peace and prosperity.  You rock in every possible way.

 Twilight.

So I found a copy at Larisa's house, and she let me borrow it.

And, um...yeah.

My eyes rolled so much that I'm still dizzy.

To paraphrase our president-elect:  You can put lipstick on a pig, and it's still a pig.  You can put strawberry-scented shampoo and sparkles on a steaming cow patty, and it's still a steaming cow patty.

Of course I need to read the next one now.  

A fine New Year's Eve. 

Early in the day, I took the Gold Line train and the bus to the Boardwalk (a long but worthwhile commute, as the Gold Line passes through Chinatown, which is always awesome to behold).  Set up shop.  Mike, the watcher of my stuff, has been kicked off of the Boardwalk by the cops (Given reason:  His dog has no tags.  Real reason:  Typical sweep of the scruffy homeless so that they don't scare the winter tourist crowd), so I've been playing catch as catch can when it comes to people keeping an eye on my items.  Instead, I've been relying on Mike the Crip for the past couple of nights.

Cold and damp.  Chana showed up, which was lovely, and we discussed ways of making sure that our relationship stays on an even and positive footing.  Fantastic!  The cold weather was making folks reluctant to sit down for a reading.  Sucky!  Finally I gave up, and walked down the Boardwalk to find someone who could keep an eye on my things.  As I did so, my name was called.  I looked.  My sister Natalie (who comes by a few times a year) had shown up with her...boyfriend?  Seemed like a boyfriend.  She'd shown up with him to surprise me.  I turned around, leading her back to the stand, and introduced her to Chana, who was waiting there with a regular client of mine.  Two readings.  Excellent.

After the client, Natalie, and the boyfriend (?) took off, I said my goodbyes to Chana, who was on a tight schedule, and packed up.  Homeward bound.  As I walked in the door, I was informed that we all (Mikey, Laurel, Savannah, and myself) were taking of to Larisa's place for New Year's Eve.  This was nice, as Larisa is of the "Let the kids run around and scream until they tire themselves out." school of child rearing, meaning that I had little to perform in the way of nanny duties.  Instead, I hung out, talked with her roommate, smoked cigarettes outside, and indulged in some marijuana use.  Once a habitual user, I've now lowered my frequency to once a month on average, so my system was unprepared for the potentcy of the sample a friend had given to me earlier in the day.  The rest of the night, I swapped bad-ex stories with Larisa, and watched Heathers for the first time in years.  Finally got to sleep as the first rays of dawn hit the windows. 

Today's been relatively quiet, as Savannah's mostly been playing with Larisa's lovely daughters, and I've split my time between watching television, reading a bit, and chatting idly with my hostess. 

Chana and I have been talking lately.  We've realized that we're almost certainly headed towards living together again, and looking for stability and routine in our lives.  At this point, looking at the financial situation and the fact that Mike and Laurel seem to be willing to deal with me until I'm a bit more back on my feet, I'm looking for something other than the Boardwalk as a source of income.  The best bets seem to involve either working out of a local psychic bookstore or doing readings online from home.  Also, we want a calmer neighborhood, something a bit more relaxed and less crime-ridden than the Boardwalk while still open to eccentricity and fun.

Pasadena is currently our top choice.  Nice city, reasonable rents by the standards of Southern California, relatively low crime, and (number one on my list), the site of an enormous number of well-stocked used bookstores.

I suspect that I've learned what I can from Venice for now.  It's time for something steadier and a touch less intense.

So:  Happy New Year to you all, and my best wishes for what looks to be a chaotic cycle around the sun.

 Still alive.  Still in good spirits.  Safe and warm for now.

The day came for me to leave.  Woke up at The Host's place, looked outside the window:  Rain.  I shuddered.  While I had a place to stay that night, and (as I found out later), my circle of friends had gone into overdrive arranging things so that I'd be out of the cold, it was a nasty reminder of the sudden instability that had invaded my life.  I turned away and made my bed.  The Host woke.

"So what time you gonna be out of here?" he mumbled.

"Dunno," I replied.  "This might clear up by noon.  If it does, then I'll set up shop and take off at sunset.  If it doesn't, then I'll have to wait till five, since Anna isn't expecting me till way later."

He grunted and nodded.  I made some breakfast, washed the dishes from last night, and settled down to watch the weather report on the morning news.

"So I"m gonna need you out of here by eleven." he said.

I blinked.  "But I said that I might not be leaving till noon, or five," 

"You said," he snorted.

A shake of my head.  "David, have I done something to piss you off?"

"Nope," he shrugged.  "I've got someone coming by at eleven.  A lady."

"Then you should have told me that when I said that I'd be out of here later," I snapped.  He looked at me blankly.  "Fine, fine, I'll be out. by then."

Sure enough, as eleven rolled around, I found myself outside in the rain, taking shelter with various local street kids under the overhang to one of the public bathrooms, listening to background lectures on the importance of keeping one's feet dry in damp weather in between coughing fits on the part of my new friends.  The cold and damp seeped into every cell of my body, causing some serious but temporary concerns as to how quickly mold might be able to grow on my skin.

Off to Anna's (annanda111 )that night:  She was furious that I was once again without a place.  I listened to her caring yet frustrated lectures, nodded, agreed, and went to bed.  Night one out of the way.  I was told that after I crashed with Larisa (moon_panther69 ), I would be welcomed at least temporarily by my friend Laurel (rainsongwg ) and her boyfriend Mike in Pasadena.  Or, rather, that I'd be crashing with Laurel, then Larisa....it's all been a blur.

At any rate, I went to Laurel's.  I re-introduced myself to Mike.  We got along famously and instantly, although I admit that I felt a more immediate connection with his six year-old daughter Savhannah (sic), a child who very nearly defines the word "precocious".  She's remarkably bright, fun-loving, and reasonably sweet with just enough of the devil in her to not be insufferably dull.  Also, she's the most stubborn child to hit this planet since I was her age.  We hit it off immediately.

The first night at Laurel's, I had some issues sleeping.  I suspect that it mostly had to do with the sudden shifts in my life combined with her apartment being utterly unfamiliar territory.  Fine.  Figured I'd make it up at Larisa's.  

Hah.

I'd forgotten that Larisa's life runs by no set schedule.  Instead, I found myself up at four a.m. on her back patio, smoking cigarettes and swapping bizarre stories.  Due to my sleep deprivation, however, I was unable to contribute as much as I usually do.  This problem was compounded when her two lovely daughters invaded the living room at six in the morning to watch a Garfield DVD after I'd managed to catch an hour's worth of sleep.

Back to Laurel's.  The original idea was that I'd split my time between Larisa's and Laurel's, or at least as much as possible, until I found a permanent residence.  However, this changed as Mike and I became good friends, and I began to play with Savhannah on a regular basis (fun, but she cheats at Chutes and Ladders).  Eventually, I was being asked to babysit here and there when I wasn't at work.  I always accepted.  Also, I found myself picking up some of the Savhannah-wrangling chores in the morning, giving Laurel a chance to sleep in every once in a while.

They began to make noises about my staying there for...well, by no means "moving in", but on a more indefinite basis while I get things together.  Then I spent Christmas with Anna, Nathan, and my goddaughter Elysia and her sister Emily.  It was a lovely time all around.  Still, I found myself missing Mike, Laurel, and Savhannah.

That night, after they came by to pick me up, Mike mentioned that Savhannah had had two godfathers.  One had died, and he hadn't heard from the other in ages.  He asked if I'd be willing to take the role.

I said "Yes," and managed to maintain my composure somehow.

In a recent entry, I mentioned that I wanted to be home.  I still haven't found that in a place, but I've found it in people:  Laurel, Mike, Savhanah, Larisa and her daughters Amethyst and Aurora, Nathan, Anna, Elysia, and Emily.  These are my family up here.  These are the people who have given me nothing but love and hope at a time when I could have given in to total despair.

And what about Chana?

I've saved the best for last:  She's simply an amazing person.  No matter what she may have gone through in the past, she is willing to work to improve her life, to make sure that things come together, and to put it all together with enormous dignity and compassion.  She's received little to no help from the social services people who have been assigned to her, and has been forced to follow up on complex bureaucratic matters and unconscionable delays while grappling with the neurochemical nightmare granted to her by the fates.  And through all of that, while making sure that she doesn't sacrifice her own hard-fought gains, she manages to be a wonderful mother to her children, and an amazing girlfriend to me.  The past is the past, but the present is amazing.  She is beautiful in mind, body, and soul.

Whatever good thoughts you've all been sending my way have been doing the trick.  Please, keep them coming so that I can finally give Mike and Laurel some privacy.

The power of positive thinking only goes so far sometimes.

As I've stated in previous journal entries, I'm moving tomorrow without a real place to stay.  Anna was kind enough to offer a night, Laurel another, and my friend Larisa stated that she might be able to find an option for me somewhere.  It's all appreciated more than I can express to any of these women. 

It's also overwhelming in another way.  As wonderful and kind as my friends are, I've been in this position often enough to know the difference between being a welcome guest and an imposition, and what with everyone being crushed under the weight of Christmas responsibilities and/or major family issues, I'm afraid that I'm well into being the latter right now.  I hate that.  I hate the idea of being a burden to any of these people, all of whom have been nothing but wonderful, loving, and supportive of me at all times.  I hate this instability, this uncertainty, this sense of being just one step away from the emergency shelter at the National Guard Armory.  Today Chana and I were thinking of packing up and taking off to San Diego, but frankly, I'm not sure who we could stay with there after eight years away from my hometown.

I'm not in despair.  Not yet.  But I can feel the ball circling the hole over and over, ready to drop in, and it's taking all of my willpower to keep it out.

I want to be safe.

I want to be warm.

I want to be home.

Rain in Venice today.  I wasn't able to work.  No major drama one way or the other.  I was planning on writing out another flashback, but I don't have the motivation.

So instead, I give you a doo-wop group, an 80s rapper, and someone in a superhero suit singing.  And there's a violin in there for some reason.

A couple of weeks ago, The Host told me that he'd be moving at the end of January, and told me that I should probably start looking for a new place.  I thanked him for the more than reasonable warning, and kept my eyes open for alternatives, knowing that this was enough time to save for a move.

Last Friday, he told me that I needed to be out "[B]y the end of next week."  Not such a great warning, but I let a friend of mine know, and she promised to keep her eyes open for rooms and such for rent, with a tentative offer to stay with her for a short while if I couldn't find anything else.  And a week is enough to find something that doesn't involve mooching, you know?

Today, he sat at my stand and let me know that I had a couple of days, since things are getting "confusing".

Oy.

Fortunately, my sweet ex Anna has offered to let me stay for a couple of days.  Then I have the other friend who promised to keep an eye out, Larisa.  So I'm not thinking of this as an unexpected aggravation.  I'm thinking of this as an opportunity to hang out with people who I actually have something in common with for a short while.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish."

( Length cut )

I was going to do this entry tomorrow to go along with an important anniversary in my life.  However, it looks like I'll be at a friend's house tomorrow, relaxing and destressing from the various curveballs of the week (more on the latest curveball later on).  I'm not sure that my friend has internet access, and quite frankly, it would be rude to sit there and tap at the keyboard while a guest at another's place.

It was seventeen years ago tomorrow.  Another relationship had failed.  This one was a heartbreaker, as the woman in question was not only hearbreakingly beautiful, but also one of the kindest, most gentle souls it's ever been my pleasure to know.  However, I added nothing to the relationship, having sunk into a hole of my own self-centered depression and negative self-esteem.  I found it difficult to get out of bed in the morning, difficult to walk outside, difficult even to go to the coffeehouse and socialize with our mutual friends.  Julie finally gathered together enough self-esteem of her own to dump my sorry ass, and take up with a slightly crazy green-haired guy with a motorcycle.  He was about as stable as me at that point, but my god, I'm sure that he was far more fun to be around.

December 13, 1991:  I was outside SoHo, the aforementioned coffeehouse.  I'd been a regular there for quite some time, and that's where Julie and I had met.  She and Steve (the man with the bike) were seated in the entryway of the closed Postal Annex next door, his arms wrapped snugly around her as I stared and brooded, lost in a land of broken, dark, violent imagery.  The self-pity finally got so extreme that even I was beginning to feel ridiculous.  That's when Jacob ran around the corner.  He was an acquiantance of mine through a couple of mutual friends.

"We got jumped" he gasped.

( Cut for length, violence, and trauma all over. )

The Host will be moving in late January. His mother is not doing well, and he feels drawn back to Washington state to take care of her. While I will miss him, this is the best possible action for him to be taking at this point, as he has never recovered from not being there when his father passed on. I wish him nothing but happiness and joy now and in the future. He has been of enormous assistance to me, taking me in during a time of need despite his knowing little to nothing about me.

This does mean that starting in late January, I will need a new place. I'm currently working on manifesting something close to where I am right now, as well as the funds for the move itself. However, I'm getting enough advance warning this time so that the old panic isn't settling in.

This is a chance for me to build everything that I'm looking for.

Also, I'm mildly surprised by the following, taken from oxymoron67 .  It's not like I've even glanced at it in the past several years:

A cold breeze over the Boardwalk this morning, with the television and newspaper warning of possible rain.  Usually this means that it's a good idea to take a day off, stay inside, drink coffee, and subject all of you to whatever musings I'm able to come up with.  However, today I had a goal:  A phone.  I haven't had one for a while for various reasons, and Chana had informed me of a decent deal at Rite Aid for a prepaid service with Virgin Mobile.  I set up.  My cart had been dropped off by my worker in a good space.  I braved the damp wind and set up between an oddly talkative mime and a jewelry seller.

The wind knocked my stand over twice, and nearly sent my cards flying down the block on several occasions.

Giving up, I walked down to where my friend Jim (he of the "Califuckinfornia" t-shirts) was set up, and borrowed some cash from him.  He's good in emergencies for slightly more than the few dollars I might be able to get from my fellow vendors, but less than I'd get by swallowing my pride and turning to the family.  We talked for a while, I listened to his plans to promote his self-published book on how to cure a bad back, he listened to a Zen parable I told him, and I took off to Rite Aid.

Two wrong buses and one wrong stop later, I finally ended up in a Rite Aid in the middle of a dingy strip mall somewhere in the eastern part of Venice.  It's an unfamiliar part of town to me.  While not completely losing the Venice flavor, it largely resembles any other low-built urban retail area in Los Angeles.  Pet stores, restaurants that straddle the line between decent dining and greasy spoon, tool shops, video stores, and a mixed sense of optimism and desperation pervade the area.

I stood in front of the cell phone display in the drugstore.  None of the items were what had been described to me.  I picked out one that looked like a decent alternative and took it to the front counter.  There was no prepaid phone card for the service.  After further discussion, the counterperson (the manager, from what I could tell) figured out what I was talking about, and pulled the phone that I was looking for from behind the counter.  Awesome!  I bought the phone, the card, and a pack of cigarettes (cheaper there than on the Boardwalk) before heading out the door.  A quick hop onto the bus, settling back as I ripped open the packaging and perused the materials.  It all seemed simple enough.  I stuffed everything that I could find in the package into  my pockets, tossed the plastic remnants into the trash at my transfer point, and headed back to the place.

I took a quick dash upstairs and went online to begin setting up.  Plugged in the phone to charge it.  Information, input, question, answer, numbers easy for me to remember but hard for others to figure out for various codes, et cetra.  Then comes the time that I'm supposed to input the serial number.  I lifted the cover off of the battery case in order to do so.  No battery.  No big deal, as there's plenty of stuff that I hadn't looked through.  I kept going through the motions.  Looked again.

No battery.

Looked through everything...all of my pockets, my bag, all over the desk.

No battery.

In a panic, I rushed downstairs, grouchy enough at this point to snap at The Host when I misunderstood a joke that he was making about my computer use for an actual complaint.  A quick jump to the local cell phone place:

"...soIcan'tfindthebatteryanywhereandIreallywantedtoturnitontonightbecausethere'scallsIhavetomaketomorrow...."

The young man behind the counter nodded sympathetically.  "What happened to the battery?"

"I don't know.  I took everything out of the front and the middle of the packaging..."

"Oh!"  A look of dismay.  "The battery is in the back of the package!"

"Shit.  I have no idea what to do.  Look,. can I just buy one here?"

"Let me check."  He rummaged through various plastic tubs that he pulled off of some shelves.  A head shake.  "No, sorry, I'll have to put it on order."

"How long will that be?"

"A few days."  

I groaned.  "A few days?"

"Sorry, yeah.  It'll be thirty bucks."

"Thirty?"  I paused and took a breath.  "I don't have thirty bucks.  The phone was only ten."

"So buy a new phone."

While I'm sure that I didn't actually scream at this point, my temper must have overflowed a bit, as there was a definite look of alarm in his face as I worked towards exhausting my vocabulary of curse words by reciting them to the ceiling of his shop.  I left before he felt the need to call the police.  Note to self:  Apologize tomorrow.

A bus ride back to the transfer point.  I walked to the westbound stop.  There, sitting on top of the tissues and old newspapers that archaeologists will some day use to put together a wildly inaccurate history of 21st century bus riding, was the plastic casing.  I picked it up, ripped it open even farther, and pulled out the molding.

A battery fell into my palm.

Back to the place, a sincere apology to The Host for my earlier rudeness, another attempt to register the phone.  It failed at the activation.  I called them.  Steve, their automated help system, narrowly escaped another chewing out from me when some survival instinct in his robotic brain finally sent me over to a human named Patricia who helped me set up everything.

I am once agan connected.  Hooray.  Now I really wish that I had the money for alcohol and drunk-dialing.

Paul approached the stand today and said that he had a gig for me that night.  Fantastic, as I want to take advantage of a deal that RiteAid has on cell phones.  I hopped on the bus, spent some time in the same donut shop in which I wrote the "Water Signs" entry, and showed up at his gallery at the right time.  After an hour of my dithering around, speaking with a couple of nice people, and watching an entire group of annoyingly serene types chanting on the floor, Paul came to the realization that since this was a Krishna crowd (What gave it away?  Was it the proliferation of dhotis?  The shaved heads?  Or maybe the constant "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare" chants?  I swear, I felt guilty wearing a leather jacket around this group), I might not get a lot of takers on the whole Tarot thing.  Instead, he handed me ten bucks and called a cab for my sorry psychic ass.

So instead of an interesting story, I give you Swedish guys in spacesuits playing awesome surf guitar.

Some drama around the stand today, something involving a skateboard that didn't work, whether or not a person needed to pay, and whether or not someone who was a friend of one of the participants should be involved in the first place.  Threats were exchanged.  It all came to nothing but mockery and laughter on the part of the observers.

So instead of that, I give you Care Bears Slashfic.

Found on Snarkfest.  NSFW.

Oh, and also this, taken from nc_bookworm :





I am really looking forward to the second day of Christmas.

The meme also got linked from a Newsweek blog on videogames.

Three different people said that they were going to show up this weekend, and did not do so.  The first two (Nathan and Anna) have not contacted me back.  This is out of character for them, so I'm far more worried than I am annoyed.  The third is Chana.  She was supposed to show up Friday.  No show, but I knew that she had an important appointment, so I figured that the wheels of bureaucracy had ground more slowly than she'd expected.  Sunday is her usual day with her kids.  But I'm a bit confused as to why she didn't show up on Saturday.  The last time she took off for a weekend without warning me in advance, she broke it off with me the following Monday.  However, I'm watching my heart more closely this time around, so I'll be more disappointed than despairing if something similar happens tomorrow.

EDIT:  Got in touch with Anna, who read this entry.  Turns out that they didn't get my emails till late, and the phone that I called was the one that they don't usually run for.  I now have a new phone number for them, and I'm resting a bit more easily.

01. Answer each of the questions below the cut using the [Flickr] search engine.
02. Choose a photo from the first three pages.
03. Copy the URL of your favorite photos [here].
04. Then share with the world.

( That Flickr Meme That's Going Around )s</div>

Her name is Angel, or at least that's her name around here, and that's all that matters to the people of the Boardwalk.   She's small and thin to the point of waifishness, with dyed black hair and stained, crooked teeth.  Her age is indeterminate due to hard living on the streets.  I'd guess somewhere in her early to mid-20s, but it's really anybody's guess.  She tends to dress in black leather.  She's friendly in the way that only the mentally unstable seem to manage, her raspy voice coming out in a lazy yet upbeat stoned drawl whenever she sees a friend or even a friendly acquaintance.

Just now, as I was walking back up to the apartment from having a cigarette, I was called over to a van by a stranger.  He pointed at Angel in the passenger seat.  "Hey, this girl likes you," he said.  "Wanna hang out and have some wine?" she added with a goofy, vulnerable smile.  I turned them down as politely as I could and walked back upstairs.

We met several months ago.  She had somehow come across a treasure trove of books on history and philosophy, and was busy selling them on the Boardwalk in exchange for beer money.  I was impressed by her taste in sales material.  A couple of books caught my eye.  I bought them from her with a compliment on her selection.  Angel's eyes lit up.  We talked a few more times.  Due to the fact that Chana was taking up much of my emotional focus at the time, it never entered my mind that the kindness that I'd shown to Angel would lead to an attraction on her part.

Since that day, Angel has repeatedly flirted with me, to the point of sitting beside me and rubbing up and down my thigh until I pulled away with a "I have a girlfriend."  She's been complimentary regarding my looks and personality.  She's been remarkably sweet, not overly physical with the exception of the thigh issue, and totally oblivious to the hints that I've dropped regarding my lack of interest.  That's fine.  I can keep gently letting her know until she moves on to another target.  I don't see any real potential for violence on her part, only a loneliness and desire to reach out.

We all have that to some extent or another.  We are born alone, and spend the rest of our time reaching out for the voice that says "I understand.  I feel as you feel.  I see as you see.  You are yourself, but you are not truly alone."  Some of us are fortunate enough to find it in our families.  However, my relationship with my family was a difficult one at best, as you can probably tell from my ending up here.  I suspect that hers was no easier.  Angel found some validation of her existence in what I said.  She doesn't strike me as one who receives much of that, and subsequently turned to me for further positive reinforcement, further empathy, further understanding.  She approaches it differently from most of us, and yet she isn't separate from us in terms of her needs and desires.  She wants to be loved, to be understood, to be appreciated, to be desired, and she is approaching one of the few people to offer a hint of any of these things to her in the form of simple kindness.

In a very real way, we are all one.

In an equally real way, we are all alone, each and every one of us.

We spend our lives bridging that gap.