Turning 38, in quarantine with friends in Cambria
Flowers from Descanso & The Huntington
I woke up today and drove to get coffee. My sunday treat, a 20 minute crawl to the edge of WeHo for a mocha from Verve. I get two. “to make it worth the trip.” While I sat sipping my coffee on the side of the road, I suddenly had a craving for fougasse. I probably haven’t had any for… maybe 5 years? Maybe longer. After two hours of searching, I finally found a spot in LA, at Platform, that sells it. Dreading a pointless drive, I confirmed several times with John that I was reading it right. Decided to call ahead and check, which proved fruitless, because after repeating myself several times, the bewildered clerk who answered my call said “Sorry I can’t hear you.” Decided to risk at and make another 30 minute drive.
When I got to Platform I stopped in at Monocle for the latest issue, and quickly got annoyed with the other shoppers. Platform is a special blend of LA entitlement, Brooklyn posturing, and high school loitering that has so far made every visit absolutely blood-boiling. People walk right into you as they pose midstride for a instagram post to show off their boba tea. Moms scowl at you after they’ve rammed their $1,200 Cybex stroller into your cafe table while digging around in their purse. Dozens of extremely annoyed delivery drivers crowd over-extended eatery kiosk doorways waiting for orders promised ready-for-pickup that have yet to be started. Platform does, however, deliver on having one of kind shops, often the only spot within an hours drive to fetch the hyper-specific goods a modern idiot like myself desires.
I got to Bianca, went to the bakery counter, and tried to find the fougasse, but seeing it nowhere. Peering into the kitchen area, I saw a large loaf of what looked like fougasse, but wanting to avoid the predictably fruitless exchange with an adamantly helpless* clerk in person, decided to try the phone again. Went outside to the bench, called Bianca again and asked after the fougasse. “The fugazzetta pizza?” “No, it’s like a French bread” “Oh, we do have baguettes!” “Oh, sur — sorry, do you have fougasse? not baguette.” “Uh… if you’re looking for French bread we have it.” I’m watching the clerk take my call from outside the restaurant, and can see their patience evaporate and their confusion plain. Frustrated, I have an idea to simply order the fougasse listed on their menu on Postmates, and just set it for pick-up. It’s $12, but I order two, again “to make it worth the trip,” and sit down to wait. 5 minutes later my phone chirps, a text message from Postmates: “sorry, one of the items you ordered isn’t available. Please make another selection.” I text John the screenshot, insane with frustration. I’m about to leave when I see that same massive fougasse-like loaf in the window. I walk into the restaurant, and flag down a clerk. He’s busy, so he sends over… the same clerk I just spoke to on the phone. “Hey, can you tell me what this bread in the window is?” “Oh it’s… I can’t remember what it’s called, but it has like garlic and onion in it?” “Great, yes, can I get some? How much is the loaf.” She retrieves the bread, and punches it into the computer. “It’s called… fougasse? it’s $10 for the loaf, or I can weigh a slice out.”
I took the whole thing, and left absolutely baffled.
*This is one of my biggest frustrations today, and I fully understand this is pushing me firmly into “back in my day” territory, but. When I worked in the mall where I was constantly beset by random requests from strangers who had no idea how to articulate what they want, my attitude was nevertheless one of ‘I’m sure I can figure this out.’ By which I mean that when approached with baffling requests or confused patrons, my posture towards them was one of an intent-to-help.
More and more I encounter customer service that seems to be adamantly helpless. I.e I can tell often before I even begin my question that the clerk has decided there’s nothing they can do. They reflexively respond in the negative before they’ve even considered what I’m asking. In some cases I have had to repeat my question with a tone of overt incredulity before I watch the clerk literalyl snap out of it and realize “oh wait. I can do that.” or “oh wait, we do have those.” It makes me feel like an absolute ass, because I know they’re probably replying out of a practiced response to terrible customers making insane requests, but that’s really NOT ever what I’m doing, I promise.
I’m three weeks into my new job, and absolutely loving it. It’s… insane how different it is working at a company where things are fully-functional, fully staffed by competent people who know how to do their job. It’s been very weird starting at a new spot during a quarantine: I have never met anyone I work with. I have no idea how tall anyone is. But, it’s remarkable how much stress has totally evaporated — heavy friction suddenly gone, like suddenly finding yourself swimming with the current, after spending years fighting up stream.
While I was reading Jaganath Carrera’s commentary of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, there was section where the image of Peter Pan trying to reattach his shadow jumped out at me. After 20 minutes of drawing it and posting it here, I can’t remember the point. “Almost like an allegory for something.”
Last week was a doozy. I’m down to myself and one other designer at work, my six-person team destroyed by burn-out, attrition and furlough. After MK and MQ left last week, I knew it was time to start looking. Or rather, after nothing changed in ask volume or scope from the rest of my co-workers, I knew it was time to start looking. I applied at a couple spots, and another reached out to me. This place that reached out to me is sort of dream gig, while a place I applied to that replied eagerly is a perfect fit. I spent last week in over 8 hours of interviews at both, and have as many this week. I’m… on a fast track to burn out myself. But if I can get away from my current place… it would be a dream come true.
We spent this last weekend in Idyllwild, hoping to escape for a minute, and get out of the heat of the city. As we drove away they announced we were in for a record heat wave: 114 F in Los Angeles, 104 in Idyllwild. Our cabin didn’t have A/C, so while it was nice to get away, I felt like I was painted on the air: a papery and kiln-dried husk. I woke up nightly with blood in my nose, my feet and hands felt like sand paper, my mouth like fly trap.
Each night, after it finally cooled off, we piled into the hot tub, turned down to a balmy 96 F — warm enough to be comfortable, cool enough to bring the heat out of our bodies. The cabin came with a telescope and I busied myself nightly with dialing in Jupiter, its moons faintly visible; or the face of the moon, its details razor sharp. Jon and Danny sat with us, our necks relaxed back against the rim of the tub, scanning the sky for satellites, tracing the cloud of the milky-way.
On our last night, John said “I just want to see a shooting star — not some little flash but one that streaks across the whole sky.” We saw plenty of the former, hairline slashes of moon-white lasting a split-second, gone if you blinked. We saw the occasional space-x orbiter, marching purposefully, if dimly, through our field of view. We saw, from time to time, too low and too close, the frenetic, silent silhouette of a bat dipping towards the water. And suddenly, just past 10, starting at the horizon and blazing across the whole span, forcing us to turn our heads as we gasped aloud, we saw a golden, snufffed-wick and still-smoldering ember of a meteor break up in the dark above the trees.
This week I start a year long certificate program in the philosophy of Yoga, a gnarly series of courses taught by a handful of PhDs and professors of religion from around the country. I’m excited, already exhausted at the thought, but eager to get going.
Day… 128 of Covid Isolation / Quarantine / Lockdown / Whatever. It is probably safe to say, in a non-hyperbolic way, that America is rapidly deteriorating. Like, to the point where I’m engaging immigration attorneys in the antipodes to see what the likelihood is that John and I can get out of here. There is no way this country survives another four years of this administration, it’s barely survived the first.
I’ve been on a yoyo of habits and laziness, focus and neglect since all this began. It’s amazing to me that I rowed a half marathon the last day of February this year. I could probably not row 2000m right now without major chest pain. We’ve been in this limbo for long enough that whole initiatives have risen and fallen. For a while there, John and I were hiking the stairs around our neighborhood. For a while I was hiking the trails myself. For a while I was running/sunning on the river trail.
I’m cancelling my gym memberships this week. I held on for the first 100 days on a maintenance membership to stay enrolled, assuming that re-opening was feasible in the near future. We re-opened, sloppily, irresponsibly, and our COVID cases shot through the roof. Everything is closed again.
I’m seeing my body change quickly. Too much solace in food. Too much take out. For a while there I was taking refuge in mixing my way through the Smugglers Cove cocktail book, learning to make tiki drinks. Did I mention that already? I don’t remember.
So I’m cancelling my gym memberships, and doubling down on what I know best: just walking more often to places, yoga, and Kalari. I’m really tucking into these virtual Kalari get togethers based out of Thailand, taught by one of the colleagues of my former teacher in Utah. The meypayattu exercises are more challenging than ever, but but I find them as mentally stimulating as they are physically. It’s a strange sensation to feel something… deeper change in tandem with your body. The energy is different.
So yeah, taking Kalari 3-4 times a week, with yoga and yogic stretching/skill sets in between. I have a silly goal to get into the splits before the end of the year. It’ll help with my kalugal kicks, but I’m hoping it’ll also just loosen my knees up, and get rid of the pain there. I want to be able to jog a day or two a week without being essentially immobilized with knee pain for the rest of the week.
I’ve been digging into the “theory” of the body as I get back into practice. Just another step deeper into my LA hallucinations.
A few weeks ago we established a “bubble” with some close friends who all tested negative the same weekend as us, and who observe the same rigor when it comes to distancing, hygiene and covid avoidance practices as us. Having people to be around has literally saved our sanity if not our relationship. Just being able to touch another body, embrace another person, talk to someone from outside your own walls is… amazing.
Last week we rented a house in Palm Springs together to get out of the city. We did nothing but hang out in the pool — it was record breaking heat, well over 120F. Tomorrow they’re coming over for drag race, we’ll see them again on Saturday, and then John and I are re-isolating for two weeks in preparation to visit friends in Sea Ranch. These new patterns of isolation, testing, bubbling. How crazy this all would have seemed in January.
Day 60 under shelter-in-place/quarantine/isolation whatever. Today they announced we’ll be in for another 90 days… at least. Like, at this point, it’s like… will we ever go back to normal. Is this the point in the novel where the protagonist starts to understand? That we’re in a fully-fledged dystopia? It’s just so wild.
Since this started we have watched a TON of documentaries, including Wild, Wild Country, Spaceship Earth, and Heavenly Bodies. All these docs that begin with people saying “we were at a point where we no longer trusted or believed in what America was, we were ready for new forms of community.” And honey… I’m there. Put me on the commune. Put me on an island. Give me a garden. Like I am done.
I, at this point, cannot go back to thinking that what I do for work matters. at. all. Like whooooo caaaaaares. This has really turned into the crisis where you really, really feel the clarity of the statement: you have one life. I just… cannot imagine that I spend the rest of it ONLY designing learning management software for fucking taco fucking bell.
I started volunteering at the LGBT Center. I started volunteering with this queer cartography website. I started drawing a LOT more. I am fully thinking like… how do I pull the ‘chute on this trajectory.
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Oh, also I started therapy. Let’s just say it: my tarot teacher recommended a Jungian dream analyst who moonlights as a shaman who also founded several global queer radical organizations. He is 82 years old. It’s maybe the best thing that has ever happened to me. He is like an editor, for my subconscious? I tell him my dreams, which are like an essay composed of my thoughts, all out of order, but there’s some good shit there; anyway, he takes them, rearranges them and hands them back and it’s like “oh yeah, that’s what I meant.” And it’s profound, and meaningful, and he just encourages me to do good, and be my best, and to decide what what I want to do and be.
Which is very frustrating when there’s nothing I am allowed to do.
It is… day 28 of isolation during the Covid-19 hullaballoo and I am climbing the walls. Lucky to still have a job, unlucky to have this brain that will never just do a little less. I have given my self a full panic attack at twice, one at 4 in the morning 10 days in, and one 5 days later when they announced that we would be sequestered for at least another 50 days.
We’ve learned not to burn through our serotonin on the weekends, as that leads to truly disastrous Mondays, when, disbelieving we have to go back to work and pretend like ANYTHING is normal. We’ve learned to work in the same house, at the same time, and somehow stagger our bandwidth consumption so we’re not both stutter stepping our way through the 50th Zoom meeting of the day.
We’ve learned that we can handle each other at our absolute most frazzled. We’ve learned to wait.
In the divine parade of the Tarot, the 12th arcanum is that of the Hanged One:
This card indicates a moment of suspension we can turn to our advantage for refining our plans in greater detail, self-knowledge, and inner work. It can also refer to a block or an inability to take action. Often this card will let us know that the time is not right for making a decision, that the situation or our own view needs to ripen further. If the Hanged One spoke they would say “Without abandoning the world, I have retired from it. With me you will find the will to enter the state where the will no longer exists, where words, emotions, relations, desires, needs no longer bind you.”
So yeah, this is the season of Le Pendu. It’s been a while since I checked in. At my last writing I was wondering what the fuck I am doing with my life, trying to figure out where I want to be going, what I want to be doing, how I want to be feeling. So yeah, NOTHING has really changed on that front — But I’m taking this time to work towards transformation and change. I’ve found a creative spark that I’m patiently fanning. I started going to therapy. I’ve been diligent in introspection. I’ve been breathing.
Over the last year Los Angeles has steadily gotten into me, and I am steadily, still, into it.
Thirty Seven.