Banishing Discontent

Comfort Food

And there it was – the bright yellow Mallomar box – like a box of sunshine just sitting there on the shelf at the Mayfair Market. A little ‘ooouwh’ escapes on a breath before I snatch the package from the shelf. This ‘ooouwh’ bubbles up from a place south of my lungs. It is usually reserved for the simple sensual perfection of a blue Tiffany’s box with the white ribbon or when opening anything from the Mac store. And what was this? - they were on sale – $2.94! where have you been all my life? Really – where have they been all my life? I vaguely remember experiencing the perfection of Mallomars in my youth. I’m not sure where I got them because in our home they were deemed ‘too expensive’ like Girl Scout cookies and any other cookie that never went on sale. Generic replacements like ‘fudge wheels’ were simply disgusting – oh my God – Mallomars! I’m a grown up so I purchase 2 boxes – one for me – one for ‘a friend.’ Seriously, I did give one to a friend – then ate mine every morning for breakfast for a week – not feeling a bit guilty. Does one feel guilty staring at the Mona Lisa or gulping in great breaths of air at Yosemite?
And sometimes a day of LA traffic – was made not so bad by thinking of that box of dark chocolate, fluffy marshmallow and crisp almost salty graham cracker goodness that was waiting for me in the big bottom right drawer my kitchen – the one that is supposed to hold bread, but instead held happiness. See – I can enjoy life - the simple pleasure of a Mallomar.
At the end of the week I returned to the market for another box, promising myself I would savor them a bit more now that the novelty was burned off. But I could have them – what fun! There were no Mallomars at the Mayfair. There were no Mallomars at the Mayfair’s parent store – the Gelson’s. Not at the Sherman Oaks Gelson’s, not at the Studio City Gelson’s, and not the Tarzana Gelson’s. Only the Gelson’s left was the Gelson’s in West Hollywood so I prepared myself before hand by checking on the web. Mallomars ‘due to their easily melting chocolate shell are only made available from late fall through April.’ It is May. Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! Why does the world conspire against me? Why do I conspire against me? When I find something I love I try to grasp at it with both hands – making it stop -making it stay – making it always the same. I want to have it. I know this never work and that I am resigning myself to defeat, but I can’t seem to stop myself.
Standing in the gotdamn super efficient West Hollywood Gelson’s looking at a cookie shelf that doesn’t even have a Mallowmar shelf sign I know I’ve missed it. I’ve missed it for a whole year and I promise myself I’ll make time to find the street just south of Sunset with the Jacaranda trees that bloom in May. Massive trees made of flowers canopy an entire street with an absolute decadence of color – an explosion of purple that makes me want to get out of my car and stand on the sidewalk – head thrown back, – tongue out to catch them like snowflakes.
I had stumbled across this street quite accidentally a few years ago when I was attempting to find a shortcut home from my agent’s office. It felt like a blessing. It felt perfect.

Last year I hadn’t made a conscious effort to go until June and the trees were made only of leaves. I was angry - at myself – at this place, at the world. It felt like a loss. So on Saturday I washed my car and took my sparkling clean windshield to Beverly Hills to drive up and down the street with the purple trees and waited for it to take my breath away, but I couldn’t recreate the feeling. I mean the trees were there, kinda blooming and it was beautiful – but empty – was I too early? Too late? Or was it because I knew it would soon be gone and I couldn’t have it for an entire year?
But you can’t hold beauty – you have to trust that it will come to you.
The problem is - to let go you have to have faith in the next moment – you have to trust that the world is a loving place and holds more than enough to marvel at - a thousand lifetimes of things that will take my breath away - fireworks, sunrises, children, flowers – I don’t have to try to capture it in a photograph or write about it, I can just breathe it in - a lesson my heart knows but my brain refuses to accept – so I grasp at control - creating a log jam of resentment and disappointment.

But I’m learning – I have the evidence of knowing that this is how I had found this particular miracle the first time –a little lost - driving in a new direction – I let go of life to breathe – an accidental left turn and there it was. Trees. Made of flowers. For me.

One day I’ll learn. Until then I’ll try to recreate happiness –even if it comes in a bright yellow box.

Orange Earthquakes

Orange - the color of traffic cones, the color of warning. All week orange lurks, undermines my renewed determination to really think positive… Smokey orange sunsets – fires burning in the mountains to the east. Orange warns me of danger in this place I have stubbornly decided to call home. Orange rinds decorate the grass around my wooden bench at the Huntington Gardens - masquerading as fat cheese curls. Even nature here imitates the artificial.
I’ve been thinking a lot about earthquakes lately. The air has been hot and windy. My friend TJ once told me that this is earthquake weather, but he said to only worry if a lot of pets run away. There is a sign outside of my apartment for a lost poodle named Poopey who was “last seen wearing a blue and white sweater.” I see it and think “run Poopey, run.” Then I notice signs everywhere. Are there really more or is it me?
A few weeks ago, even before the wind blew in I attended a free LA Parks program. The “earthquake hike” at Franklin Canyon promised to explain “the unique characteristics of California’s fault lines.” It sounded almost as fun as the bug walk the week before.
Penny, the Universal Records data manager and fully uniformed volunteer ranger, informed us that the “earthquake hike” trail was closed “due to angry bees.” We spent most of the morning in the Sookey Goldman Nature Center. Thirteen adults sitting at school lunch tables in hiking boots watching videos of famous LA earthquakes.
Our brief walk around the reservoir reveals some fascinating information; Not too far from where we are standing geologists had found evidence of an ancient quake so violent that it had sheared trees in half from their trunks, “basically decapitated them,” Penny smiles and makes a chopping motion. She leads us back to the nature center with tales of out of control gas fires and buried first responders. She enthusiastically urges us to prepare and displays her perfectly packed earthquake bag.

Until this moment I had always equated being in an earthquake with the motion of getting hit from the side in a bumper car in Ocean City - jarring and unpleasant sure, but no reason to let up on the wide push pedal and keep lurching ahead.

But this was something different - an earth that could buckle and shear – disappearing beneath my feet or slamming a building aside. It is an awesome in a way that I have never quite considered before. I find it harder to breathe.
In the middle of a perfectly good day I stop to imagine the earth suddenly dropping out from under me or three feet to my left.

And now the news, - geologists warn that there is a 97% chance of a “significant earthquake” in the next thirty years. KTLA chooses this week to make this report?! - Now my only question is where will I be? In my apartment asleep? My apartment was built in 1929 so it will be fine, right? All four floors above me will stand defiant and worthy of architecture before plywood. Will I be able to find my glasses I the dark? What if the cute neighbor’s apartment is okay? Will I have to spend weeks a four eyed geek?
Will I be in my coffee shop with strangers? Is that better? I should definitely keep more gas in my car!
You know what – odds are I will be in my car! I am always in my car. That’s probably a fairly safe place to be.
The paranoia is cloying and now I feel it is well excused. But it is not good, I know it is not good. I don’t breathe. I think – ‘haven’t I learned how to talk myself out of this tree by now?’
But this rudder of worry I steer my life with goes deep. It comes from a childhood of fear. Not of earthquakes but of possibilities. I remember sitting on the brown carpet in our downstairs rec room in front of the dark giant console tv. Where I live when I grow up? I couldn’t be an actress – because and I couldn’t live in New York – that’s where the nuclear bombs would go – I had seen The Day After. And Los Angeles was out of the question – they were going to have a terrible earthquake and drop into the Pacific - I had also seen Lex Luther sink California along the San Andreas fault.
So I’ve spent my adulthood relearning life. A ship with hope as my rudder and sails that fly with breath.

A Simple Second Ice Cream

So yesterday I’m at this big volunteer event at an elementary school – helping some friends who have organized it and I’m passing out wrapped ice cream bars and cones – its fun – who doesn’t like passing out free ice cream? A little girl comes up to me with a partially eaten ice cream held close to her side and asks for another – which I hand to her – it is free we have plenty. I make my way around the school yard which is Bagdhad hot and she returns to me with another little girl in tow who now holds her ice cream down to her side and asks for another and snap – I’m an asshole. I lean in and say – “You already have one – We need to be sure everyone gets one first. Wouldn’t it be terrible if some people didn’t get any ice cream?” I say this with complete awareness that the first girl is standing there with both hands clutching ice cream. So now – even though we have plenty of ice cream – I have shamed both of them. So what piece – what fragment of my psyche was so fragile that it chipped off on the way across the school yard? The one that in a better mood would have smiled and reached back in the box – handing her ice cream drumstick cone number two and the lesson that asking for more - might get you more, - because history isn’t made by well behaved women! They could have talked about it years later – when they were happy and successful businesswomen with functioning families! - about how great was that volunteer day when we painted the school and got two ice creams !

No! Instead I reached inside and served up a healthy dose of shaming. They’ll probably become attached to external validation to disprove the idea that they are bad, greedy little girls... They'll do drugs and have to get a boyfriend who deals – then they’ll join the gang and hang out on corners late at night wearing that defeated blank stare and tight knit tops that don't cover their muffin top bellies - until one day when they are sent to jail because they had to knock over a convenience store to buy formula for the babies they had to fill that hole of longing and need that could once be filled with a simple second ice cream. :)