My Suitcase

I really hate to keep writing about my stuff, but D is off having adventures and moving into our new apartment this weekend, while I am still here packing my . . . stuff. It’s hard not to obsess about it.

I’ve been agonizing for a week or more about this vintage suitcase. I love this suitcase, because it’s cool looking and I love cool looking old stuff. It looks great in my living room next to the wicker Pottery Barn trunk and the old hat box that was used to hold makeup during the run of Aces Wild.
 

But this suitcase is not just décor, it has a particular history.

When my sister went off to college, my parents presented her with a gorgeous four piece set of green leather luggage. I loved this luggage, I lusted for it. Especially the little rectangular cosmetic case, remember those? Linda went off to college with this luggage, and it followed her into her marriage, and when she died the year after she graduated and got married, it stayed with her husband. (Except for the cosmetic case, which somehow ended up back at our house, but which my mother threw away when she moved to L.A. Grrr.)

 

Linda in her '40's getup and her swell hat

A few years later, when I went to college, there was no money for luggage. There was an old suitcase of my dad’s held together with a giant belt and duct tape.

So I went out to the thrift shop and I found myself this suitcase, along with another one matching. These suitcases were so completely inappropriate for the purpose, they were heavy, they had no wheels, they weren’t that big. But they were cool looking and they were what I could get. And they were sort of an FU to my parents, who could afford fancy luggage for Linda, but not for me.

So yes, I actually packed and carried this old vintage suitcase and its mate to college and back again many times, and then to L.A. The other one wore out and fell apart at some point, but I kept this one and just sat it in my living room, looking cool. It made a cameo in Slingin’ the Slang, it was just the right style.

But now I am moving across the country and I can’t justify schlepping it with me any longer. I often think that the things I own are less important than the stories that go with them, and I can no longer justify keeping this thing just for the sake of the story. So I’ve taken pictures of it, I’ve said goodbye, and I’ve told its story. Anybody want it?

Distress Signals

My car is sending me distress signals from New Jersey. 

I have no idea how many weeks ago I actually wrote that last post. Despite all that agonizing, it has still taken me this much longer to post my news on Facebook. I’m 67 boxes into this massive undertaking. I have thrown out or shredded bushels of paper and I have a growing mountain of stuff in the spare bedroom being saved for some mythical garage sale I am planning on having when I am back in town in March. I have things on eBay. (Anybody want an elliptical trainer? Or an antique stereoscope?) 

 I hate STUFF.

I am thinking nostalgically of those days when I was working in NY and living in someone’s spare closet, with only a week’s worth of clothing that needed to be schlepped to the laundry every week, but still. All other possessions digital only. Monastic. I could do that.

We’re moving back east precisely because I’ve spent so much time sleeping on theatre board members’ couches and at the Pod Hotel. But yikes! This time I’m taking my whole house with me!

Working on the clothing now. D’s is mostly all packed, except for his ties. The man must own 65 ties and I’ve only ever seen him wear two. When he moved to LA from NY originally, he could not believe that he didn’t have to wear a tie to work. He carried one in his bag every day for the first week, just in case. But he loves them, so I will carefully fold them and lay them across my dresses, promiscuously commingling our clothing in the same box.

The packing is bringing out the worst of my OCD. I mean, everything has to be organized and packed logically and efficiently. The freakin’ CDs took hours and hours of my life, and who even listens to CDs anymore? D talked me into transferring them into binders and throwing out the jewel cases, which was a really great idea because: 30 lbs or so of plastic out of my life! (But recyclable? No idea.) But the liner notes. I felt so guilty about the liner notes. Don’t I owe it to all the musicians listed, the composers and special guests, the designers and artists? I tried sliding the liner notes into the slots in the binder pages along with the CDs. Worked great, until I had 200 or so CDs in a binder that was supposed to hold 400, and it wouldn’t close. In the end, I threw out the liner notes for all the pop and rock. (Gasp. It’s still hard.) But crikey, I hadn’t looked at any of it for a hundred years, and I don’t even get liner notes anymore because I download MP3s now, so really, WTF?

Except for the musicals, though. Hence, a giant binder of rock, pop, alt, punk, jazz, etc., and a large box of musicals, still in their jewel cases, liner notes intact. I can try to be noble, but musical theatre will make a fool out of me every time.

I’m going into the bedroom to fold ties now. 

Big Announcement

How does one navigate major life changes in this era of incessant sharing? When I make public my achievements, my political and religious beliefs, the constant cultural commentary that infuses my brain, and occasional photos of my food, how do I then share with you, friends, aquaintances, colleagues (and all three followers of this blog) the biggest change I have undertaken in my life since moving to Los Angeles?

I’m moving out of Los Angeles.

I’ve known for the last few weeks, but I’ve only been telling people quietly on a “need to know” basis. I felt that I needed to make some sort of announcement, but I also felt like it could be the most personal thing I’ve ever posted on facebook.

I’m moving to New York, or more accurately, New Jersey. Or more accurately, I’m becoming fully bicoastal, since my mom will stay in L.A. and I’ll be back once a month to visit her, plus take meetings (hopefully) and meet with graphics clients while I’m here.

So I’m not really moving, just packing up all of my possessions, loading them on a moving van, driving across country with a husband, dog and parrot, and renting out my house. (Anyone need a house? Two miles from the beach!)

The planning and the packing and the stress of it at first made everything into a kind of blur. It didn’t really hit me until I saw my car drive away on the cross-country transport, whereupon I burst into tears. (Yes, I shot video of my car leaving me for the east coast. It kind of reminds me of the credits sequence of Slingin’ the Slang, where Samantha dances off down the street, turns the corner and is gone. Stop it, I’m tearing up again.)

And the packing. The PACKING.

 If you follow me on fb, you may have seen some posts about my stuff, my STUFF. First it was the yearbooks -- I am in possession of seven belonging to my sister and six or eight belonging to my parents. Kind of cool to look at, but collectively weighing more than fifty pounds. Not coming with. I took photos of all the relevant pages I could find, asked the fb hivemind, and decided they will have to go to the recycle bin.

The STUFF is an emotional minefield, too. The yearbooks again, for example. All those photos of my teenaged big sister, carefree and DOMINATING all academic competition in high school. Also, all four of her college yearbooks, which I remember my brother-in-law leaving on my parents’ front porch one day, some months after Linda died of Hodgkins disease at the age of 22. I thought they were so precious at the time, but now I look at them, she barely makes an appearance -- just the standard headshot her senior year.

I may not be a millenial, but I am adopting the millenial attitude towards STUFF. If I can’t keep it on my phone or hard drive, I don’t want to own it any longer. I have shelves and shelves of books, but I’m going to attempt to get rid of all but the plays, the literature, and the few books aquired in L.A. that are absolutely necessary to my existence. (Of course, I haven’t gone through them yet, so I don’t yet know how many will be deemed “necessary.”) I am ALL FOR keeping my library on my iPad. (As a side note, I love reading on my iPad. Did you know you can download ebooks from the library? So if you’re lonely and bored at two in the morning, you can download a book to read ABSOLUTELY FREE. Instant gratification, gratis.) I have stacks of screenplays -- who wants ‘em? Likely more than half my boxes will be full of nothing but paper and words. (Don’t get me started on the office supplies -- I dumped three bags of recycling yesterday because: printed scripts, floppy disks, CDRs and all the accoutrement of making the ephemeral solid in the world -- OBSOLETE. Yippee!)

So that’s my big announcement. I haven’t posted on this blog, with its strangely prescient title, for years, but when D proposed the cross-country car trip, I only agreed if he would let me document the whole process. Watch this space for further adventures.

Gory Details

I wasn't going to blog about it this time. Fans of my previous blog read all about it the first time, and I thought I was just going to be bored with the subject.

Then I got the hardware.

The backstory is about this weird syndrome I developed in my right wrist (and now it's in my left wrist, but we're not talking about that right now). It's called ulnar impaction, and it has to do with the long ulna bone in the forearm bumping into the little lunate bone in the wrist and mashing it to a pulp. Well, not exactly a pulp, but a bruised and degenerative mess. Likely caused, or at least exacerbated, by years of pounding away at a keyboard. So several years ago, I underwent an extremely invasive and fairly awful surgery on my right hand.

Sigh. You can read all about it here (scroll down to March 16, 2007 for the beginning of the saga).

Recovery from surgery, end of story, right? Nope.

That giant piece of hardware that they put in me--you can see the x-rays of it in my former blog--was too big for my arm. Most people live with the plate inside them for the rest of their lives. (And no, it never actually set off the metal detector at the airport, it's made of titanium.) But again, I seem to be some freak of nature and my arm doesn't have quite enough flesh on it to cushion the plate. So all this time I've had chronic tendonitis and various sprains and strains in that arm. So I finally had the doctor take it out of me.

Holy hardware, Batman! No wonder this thing has been so painful. It's HUGE. And heavy! And look at the screws! SEVEN of them! Six of the screws (the shorter ones) attached the plate to my bone. The seventh and longer one went obliquely through my bone, holding the two sides of it together after it had been severed. (You'll have to read the old blog for details on that.) Self-tapping screws, I was informed by HB, who knows about tools and stuff.

So I once again have a cast on my right hand, this time for six weeks. (Last time it was for three months.) You'd think taking out the plate would be an easy process, and I guess it is, compared to the original surgery. But the recovery is still long, because now I have seven holes in my bone. As my doctor explained to me, according to the rules of physics (which I mostly slept through in high school, sorry Mr. Brennan), any pressure applied to an object goes directly to the weakest part, so until the holes fill back in again, I am at much higher risk for breaking my arm. You can just see some of the holes in this bad cell phone photo. Sitting in the doctor's office, I could see them all. It's a little freaky.

And of course, the obligatory Frankenstein photo of the incision, one week after surgery. Note where the doctor has written "YES" on my arm, to make sure he would perform the surgery on the correct appendage.

Ye Public Writer has been largely absent from this space due to actual work needing to be done, and the fact that I have been writing in private, back in my cozy little office, so no interesting public experiences to be shared. But with five more weeks of a cast on my hand, followed by several months of physical therapy, it seems I will be blogging again.

social democracy at the library

And then there are the times when you’re writing along, minding your own business, and someone kind of weird sits down next to you.

I’m sitting at the library today, getting lots of work done, as a matter of fact--or I was, until somebody just arrived to share my table.

This fellow looked normal enough--t-shirt, cargo pants, computer bag. Mid-40s, grayish, longish hair, glasses. Not too bad looking. He starts by setting his stuff down, hanging his denim jacket over the chair.

Then he starts wiping the table with damp paper towels. Okay. Maybe it looked a little sticky or dirty, that happens sometimes (although not usually at this upscale library).

He wipes and he wipes. And he wipes.

Then when he finally opens his computer bag, it’s full of bubble wrap. Oh, wait, no, there’s a computer wrapped up in that bubble wrap. The bag seems to be lined in it (the kind with the big bubbles), and then the computer itself is wrapped in it (the kind with the smaller bubbles). He unpacks his computer, carefully repacking the larger sheets of bubble wrap back into his bag, and laying the smaller sheets out on the table. He folds them into a lap-top size mat and places his computer on top of it.

(I’m thinking, won’t that heat up his computer awfully? None of my business--)

He reaches into a pocket of his computer bag and pulls out a smaller bubble-wrapped package. This one is his power cable. And another one, containing an extension cord. (That’s kind of a clever idea, why didn’t I ever think of it? Except not wrapped in bubble-wrap.)

He sits down, he adjusts his bubble-wrap place mat so it is perfectly square underneath his computer.

I’m no longer working, you notice--I’m now blogging instead. I’m completely distracted. And he doesn’t smell too pleasant, either.

Hmmm, there’s a carrel across the room that’s available. I’d really get more work done with a little privacy.

Does that make me a bad person?

distracted

Today we’re writing at home, but with distractions. Pandora is on the computer, and someone (else) is cleaning the house. [If someone (else) were not cleaning the house, I would be cleaning it, and hence, not writing. House cleaning is a primary means of writing avoidance, so I avoid doing it whenever possible.] The refrigerator is another big distraction, not to mention the pantry.

Pandora just got the “pause.” I cannot write with music playing. Also, the mic picks up the music at odd moments and I suddenly see words appearing on my screen all by themselves, like “Me and my cousins and you and your cousins it’s a line that’s always running.” (Stupid software understands Vampire Weekend better than it does me.)

However, when I am forced to write in a café or something, I can often tune the music out if it isn’t too obnoxiously loud. And if the talking is a dull roar, that’s okay, too. On the other hand, if someone is sitting right next to me having an intense conversation, that’s a killer. Suddenly nothing in the world is more important than whether she finally got the top she wanted at Ed Hardy or whether the stupid idiot texted her back. Or whether he understands the nature of the job and is willing to put in extra hours for no pay. (For the experience.) Sigh. Other people’s lives are so much more interesting than mine.

Writing this blog is, of course, the ultimate distraction. Because I’m actually writing, so it doesn’t qualify as writing avoidance! And I can futz with the template for hours, I tell you, there is nothing more fascinating than deciding what it will look like. And I haven’t even launched! Will today be the day I announce this blog to all my “friends” on Facebook? (If so, scroll down and read the posts in order, dammit!) Will I click on the “monetize” link and start selling adspace? Then I can start obsessively counting my hits and followers--will anyone click on the ads? How many pennies will I make? Will this blog make me famous so the studios will be begging me to write screenplays for them? Or will it make me so rich I'll never have to write a screenplay again?

Hmmmmmm . . . must ask agent.

Now I'm facing the fact that it's been over a week and I've yet to take myself on a single "artist's date." I had such great plans, sitting out on Dockweiler Beach. I was going to go to Union Station to admire the architecture. I was going to check out the Renoir exhibit at LACMA. But why bother when I can look at pictures of it all from the comfort of my computer? And have the refrigerator close at hand.

But I will be back in my shrink's office tomorrow admitting that I failed. I did not break out of my box. I did not open up my head. I did, however, get halfway through the re-write of the outline of the big commercial movie.

A thought to ponder: who's a better writer, the one who is contented and secure, who comes from a place of honesty and compassion, who looks at the world with inquisitiveness and without judgment? Or the miserable, depressed, lonely wretch who looks at the world with sarcasm and contempt but is really, really smart? Discuss.

deadlines and such

April 5, 2010

Today’s episode of Writing in Public brings us to the dance studio, which doesn’t really count because I write here all the time. Twice a week I bring my 11-year-old god-daughter to her ballet class, and despite the on-the-hour chaos when classes change, and the ongoing background piano accompaniment (HEAvy on the DOWNbeat), I get a lot of writing done here.

Let’s face it, I often get more writing done when I’m not at home. There’s just so much more writing-avoidance readily available at home. There’s the laundry, which always seems to be in a giant mound no matter how recently I did it. There’s the refrigerator. Unfortunately, the phone follows me where ever I go, as does the e-mail. But I do find it much more embarrassing to sit for hours playing Mahjong Towers Eternity (which was a free download from a coupon on a Borders receipt!) when people might actually see what I am doing. Writing in Public does keep my nose to the grindstone.

Unfortunately, my writing process often includes taking naps. I haven’t figured out how to do that in public yet. Not without getting my computer, phone and purse stolen, at least. And there are those times when you just sit and stare at the screen.

Nothing’s coming.

Anything now?

Nope, nothing.

La-da.

Wonder how Mahjong Towers Eternity is doing without me?

April 6, 2010

Which brings me to the downside of writing in public: deadlines. Not like “this is when you have to turn in the draft” kind of deadlines, but “dance class is over you have to stop now” deadlines. Or in today’s case, the “library parking is only free for two hours” deadline.

Yup, today I’m at the library, which is not really writing in public either, and all the other people with laptops really are writing, or researching, or doing homework. Nobody comes to the library just to look cool. (In fact, I’m sitting across from a woman with neon orange earplugs in her ears, you can’t get less cool than that.) Also, I’m at the Beverly Hills library today, so there are no homeless people taking naps here, either.

I didn’t get much written yesterday at the dance studio because I was, in fact, editing and re-writing the post from the day before. And today I’m not going to write very much because I do have to work on the screenplay (and I’ve only got 1½ hours left in free library parking).

I just came from a meeting with one of my personal goddesses of screenwriting. I’ve got two screenplays in progress at the moment--a big, commercial, four-quadrant comedy, and a little, terrifying, indie thriller. She was giving me notes on the little indie, and as always, she was dead on.

So today, I’m going to take advantage of the peace and quiet of the libes and actually go to work. The only question is, will I be disciplined and work on the big commercial story that is going to pay the mortgage (I hope), or do I follow my heart and work on the dark, twisted, psycho story that I'm going to have to direct myself and pay for with credit cards? Hmmmmmmm . . .