All-American Freak

I seem to have tripped on February, sailed over March, and landed on the other side of April. Well, it is a leap year after all.

In February, my little cat died and I was sad. In March I turned 40 and celebrated with a big dance party and I was happy. Meanwhile, plenty of other stuff’s been happening to make me scared and angry, like the weather changing from blazing hot to ice cold every other day, and Middle America coming out publicly as the land of misogynistic xenophobes, or misoxenic gynophobes, or whatever the technical term is for the racist, sexist swine who fill out the bloated beer gut of America. I’ve seen articles for bloggers about what to write about when you can’t think of anything to say. Who needs that? If you’ve got nothing to say, maybe you shouldn’t be blogging. What I need to know is, what do you do when there are so many things you want to say that it all gets tangled together and clogs up your brain, so that when you try to speak all that emerges is a guttural scream?

There’s an old Russian saying, “Don’t read the news before dinner.” “Or any other time, if you want to save your sanity” Mr. Koz remarks, poking his head in from the other room to determine what new madness on the airwaves has incited me to break out into loud, unintelligible Yosemite Sam-like snarls and growls.

The first time I heard about this guy with a funny name who was running for President, I was standing around with some other parents in the kitchen of our preschool co-op, fixing lunch and listening to them talk politics. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Some mixed-race dude with a bizarre name, who had lived in Indonesia as a child, was running for President? I became immediately suspicious. Not that I didn’t believe he was the genuine article. No – my mind was boggling that someone like me was running for office. I’ve never known anyone personally who could relate not just to the experience of growing up in a multiracial family in America at a time when yogurt was still considered pretty exotic, but who was also periodically taken out of that hermetically sealed world of Velveeta ‘n Wonder Bread, to live in hot, raw, smelly, faraway places, like Indonesia for goodness sakes. I don’t know about his early travel experience, but mine was traumatic in a lot of ways; still, I am grateful that I got to see other places, where people did things differently and ate different kinds of food, but they were still people. You can’t grow up having those kinds of experiences without developing a broader perspective of the world and more compassion for its inhabitants, helpful traits if you’re going to be a world leader who’s got to rub shoulders with diplomats and dignitaries from countries around the globe. I’m proud of President Obama for rising above the racist jibes that his opponents have resorted to in an effort to reach out to voters who are still mad that they aren’t allowed to have slaves to boss around. Having been subjected to many indignities over the years as a consequence of my perceived race (since most people can’t tell “what” I am, they tend to project on me whatever they are most afraid of or titillated by), I only wish I were able to react in the calm and collected way that Barack Obama does while continuing to do his job. I guess that’s why he is the leader of the free world, and I’m a reclusive artist who avoids daylight almost as much as politics.

I do remember sticking my head out of the cave a year ago, to hear that Osama Bin Laden had been brought to justice. I still marvel at the dignity with which the President shared that news with the country. No hat waving yippe-ay-ays or other embarrassing gloating. I really appreciate having a dignified adult in charge, someone who understands that the whole world is not guided by the same values that drive this country – which is not to suggest that he doesn’t share any of those values. I know I do. I don’t agree with every decision he makes, but I respect the way he handles himself with grace while bearing criticism on a magnitude that would leave me in a permanent fetal position, all without skipping a beat in doing the job he was elected to do.

It’s difficult for me to talk openly about this kind of thing. I have to force myself not to read the comments after news articles because they are trolled by the most hateful people, spreading their nastiness like a bad infection. Reading that stuff makes me feel like my head will explode, which I guess is its intended purpose. The first time I posted a picture of myself in this blog I wondered if I should do it, knowing that some people who might otherwise like my writing would be turned off instantly once they saw I wasn’t blonde-haired and blue-eyed.  But then I thought, so what? It’s not my job to make everyone like me, not to mention, who wants people like that around anyway?

Perhaps you think I am exaggerating in my assessment of others’ attitudes toward my coloring and facial features. Let me tell you a little story.

I had just graduated from college and moved in with my buddy Hank, who had all the fine features of a porcelain doll, with flowing blonde hair and pale blue eyes. I’d had a few small art shows in LA and Santa Barbara, and left a number of little books with my contact information at the cafes and galleries where my work was hung. One day I received a long letter from a woman who had been particularly moved by one of my drawings. Wow, my first fan mail! I wrote back to her, and was surprised to get another letter a few days later. This began a long correspondence, which took on the tone of friendship, and I looked forward to getting letters from my mystery pen pal. Once, she asked me to send her a picture, and I drew her a small cartoon of myself smoking a cigarette. When I told her I was going to be taking the bus to Santa Barbara for my brother’s graduation, she offered to pick me up from the station. We talked on the phone several times to sort things out, and Hank and I were both nervous but excited when we boarded the Greyhound. What if she’s cool and we have a new friend? What if she’s a psychotic ax murderer?

It was dark when we arrived at the bus station, and there was hardly anyone there. We looked around and saw a car of the description we were given sitting alone in the parking lot. As we walked toward it, a woman jumped out and came running towards us, calling my name. I raised my hand in greeting, which she ignored as she dashed past me to fling her arms around Hank. It was an awkward moment as I explained that, actually, we were the other way around, and I was unprepared for the look of shock and confusion on her face. We got into her car, but she was visibly agitated. As we drove around she became more and more upset. Finally, I asked her,” Is something the matter?” At that, she burst into tears and cried, “I thought you were going to be white!” Then, instead of taking us to her house as planned, she dumped us at the doorstep of an unsuspecting acquaintance of hers, who was frightened awake by our arrival in the middle of the night, but gracious enough to set us up on her pull-out couch as our erstwhile host fled into the darkness, never to be heard from again.

I don’t think of myself as white, but I don’t particularly think of myself as anything else, either. While strangers might approach me with attitudes ranging from curiosity to hostility, friends who know me well tend to forget that any of my ethnic origins differ from theirs. For much of my life, most people I met had barely heard of half the places my DNA traces back to, while the places they had heard of were often the butt of crude jokes. Ironically, I was way more foreign in those distant countries, where I got giggled at constantly for being fat and pink compared to all the lean, brown children who were purported to be my relatives. I dissociated from those places at a very early age, and never more than when I had to stay there did I identify with being an American. Living in Indonesia at age nine, I was so homesick that I taught my little brother all the patriotic songs I had learned in Mrs. Smith’s class in the 3^rd grade, and tape recorded us singing them and saying the Pledge of Allegiance. It trips me out to think that the only other person I’ve heard of who might truly understand how I felt back then ended up becoming President.

Happy New Year!

Thank heavens the holidays are over and the New Year is firmly under way.  Luckily I was too busy with projects and events to worry too much about the end-of-the-year miasma that usually sets in around mid-November. I didn’t post anything here during that time because everything I wrote came out either way too personal, or too cynical, which didn’t reflect the fact that it was actually the best Christmas I’ve ever had. There’s something to be said for choosing only to be with people you actually like during the holidays. Like, “Hooray!” Or even, “Hallelujah!”

In that respect, the Pottery 90210 Holiday Sale was a great success.  What a delight, to spend time with a group of smart, interesting people, in a house filled with beautiful things we’ve made. We sold quite a lot of ware, and had a fun time doing it. We’re thinking of making it an annual event.

The day after the pottery sale, I danced at Anja and Anaheed‘s Holiday party. For the past five years or so, I’ve been behind the scenes at most of Anaheed’s bellydance events, helping to set up chairs, hang curtains, serve food, and clean up when it’s all over. So I’ve been steeped in the scene for a while, but since I hardly ever get up on stage myself, people often recognize me, yet aren’t quite sure from where. Little do they know, I’m the one who keeps the air conditioner running and the cookie tray filled while they are dancing and bargain hunting at the swap meet. This time, I was the one going out in the spotlight, and it felt weird to stand around watching my friends taking care of jobs that I am accustomed to doing with them.

It’s always a bit nerve-wracking to go out in front of an audience, but even more so when said audience is made up of seasoned dancers and their friends and families. It had been a while since I’d gotten up there, and never to live music before. But everyone there was very encouraging, and I had a great time!

So here we are now. It’s 2012, time of great change they say. Welcoming the year in that spirit, I’ve begun a mural in my kitchen. It started out as an abstract doodle, but quickly took on its own character. Right now, it reminds me of a scene from “Pictor’s Metamorphoses,” a short story by Herman Hesse that I was introduced to last October in a painting workshop at the Jung Institute. It’s a fable about transformation and how we are affected by the choices we make. It will be interesting to see where this goes. Stay tuned…

Modern Times

I’d planned to write about something else, but my thoughts keep returning to those awful machines that were invented for the express purpose of destroying life. Guns. Everywhere in the news, people keep using them to murder each other. You see them now not just in movies and videos, but billboard ads, jewelry, and clothing designs. Not too long ago, I watched a hyperactive 10-year-old girl at the Y pantomime shooting various kinds of guns to the song “Paper Planes” by M.I.A. Let’s not even question the teacher’s judgment in playing that song for a class of 6-10-year-old tap dancers. How in the hell did this girl know how to realistically mimic shooting a pistol, a rifle, and a semi-automatic weapon?  A friend’s first grader was recently threatened by a note, given to her by a classmate, which included her name next to a picture of a gun. Aren’t first graders supposed to be drawing houses and people and flowers and puppies and stuff like that? It’s disturbing! I just read in today’s paper that a mother got the death penalty for shooting and killing her four children. Some guy shot a bunch of his coworkers in an office building. And then there was the man who opened fire in the middle of the street two weeks ago, just a few blocks away from here, at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Just out of the blue, some dude flips out and starts shooting at random strangers in the street. What is wrong with this picture? Why did he have a gun in the first place?  Why does anyone have a gun? To protect themselves from people with guns! Or, to steal stuff from people without guns! That’s all.  ’Cause there sure aren’t a lot of rhinos to hunt in Hollywood. Or anywhere else actually, since they’re now officially extinct, thanks to people with guns. Some folks actually think that it’s a human right to carry around a gun, just because a couple of hundred years ago some rich businessmen wrote out a document to protect their interests, which at the time included owning other people.  But really, a right?  Access to clean air, water, and food, a place to live, and being treated with dignity, those are rights. Which, I might add, are hardly being met for most of the world’s population, thanks mainly to the people who claim the right to wave guns at anyone who has something they want for themselves. I’ll say it again. Air. Water. Food. Shelter. Dignity. Those are rights. Anything else is a boon, a privilege, a blessing – call it what you will, but it’s extra.

Over and over again, human beings keep proving that they are not responsible enough to handle the weapons they have invented. In a time when fear is spreading, emotions are rising, tempers are flaring, and old hurts are being exposed and rubbed raw by new methods of mass communication, people are beginning to reach their limits. Everyone’s got a different breaking point. The guy at Hollywood and Vine freaked out after his girlfriend dumped him. Who knows what his life was like up until then, but that’s when he came uncorked. What would he have done if he hadn’t had a gun? Gone and got drunk and got in a fistfight, maybe. Instead, he goes and just starts shooting randomly at everyone he sees, because he’s so full of hate he can’t see straight, and anyway killing is just a thing that people do in video games and movies, right? It’s not real. Then of course, because it’s Hollywood, he actually kills someone famous, and so now his name goes down in infamy. If he hadn’t been shot and killed himself, he would’ve probably been offered a movie deal.

On the day it happened, I was over in West LA, hosting the opening of the art sale with my friends from Pottery 90210. Someone mentioned there had been a shooting, but as we were busy all day I didn’t hear anything else, and forgot about it. On the way home, I discovered that traffic was snarled in a knot, with all the main thoroughfares jammed like a parking lot, but zipping smugly through my secret network of side streets, I didn’t give much thought to possible reasons for the gridlock. Only when I got back and Mr. Koz filled me in on the news did the realization hit home. Just a few weeks ago, Kozlet’s teacher started a class project researching all the famous landmarks in our city. The children pulled their subjects out of a hat, and Kozlet’s came up the Broadway Hollywood building at Hollywood and Vine, which was featured in Charlie Chaplin’s famous 1936 movie, Modern Times. When we were looking it up online, Kozlet immediately recognized the sign in the photograph and exclaimed, “That building’s famous? But I see it all the time!” In fact, we were just down there, at a nearby bank, only a day or two before a wacked out guy from Pennsylvania came down from his overpriced apartment to take out his disappointment on the world in a cinematic flourish custom made for, and by, the city of broken dreams.

Earlier, while helping Kozlet look for information about the historic building for his report, I had been disappointed to find that the only articles available were controlled by the real estate company that recently turned the old department store into luxury dwellings for the Nouveau LA loft-dwelling hipsters, and consisted mostly of advertising, with very little history. Only one site hinted at any of the tantalizing tidbits that make Hollywood history interesting, in this case a secret passage kept by Howard Hughes between his apartment in the building and his office at the Pantages Theater.  The only other article I found was a Times spotlight on three of the renovated units, one of which belongs to Dave Navarro from Jane’s Addiction. The article wasn’t actually that interesting, though. Yeah, the guy’s a rock star, so he paid a lot of money to get someone else to design his Hollywood pad to reflect his personal style right down to the last cliché. The most interesting space covered by the article belonged to a couple who are actually designers, so they didn’t have to hire anyone to decorate their apartment, and they made some of the stuff themselves. But nothing about their style felt compelling to me either. I think I might actually live on a different planet from the people who can afford to live in that place, even though they are practically my neighbors. Hi Dave! Nice to see you. Ooh, nice chandeliers, they really set off the naked lady wallpaper. Hey, good thing you didn’t get shot walking out your front door last week!

I didn’t tell Kozlet about the shooting. Before it happened, I had promised to take him down to “his” building to look at it and take some pictures, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to go there since, even though it’s practically just down the street. He keeps bugging me about it, but I’m not ready.  I know it’s not likely to happen again soon, not right there anyway, but it isn’t easy reasoning with a PTSD-addled psyche, even my own. I’ll do it. But it won’t be the same. Just like walking down the hall to my apartment hasn’t been the same ever since a year and a half ago, when a disgruntled man broke in to shoot one of my neighbors, his ex-wife.

Yes, it happened here, but these things don’t always happen “only in Hollywood.” People who defend their right to own guns and enjoy violent entertainment get extremely angry at opinions like mine. But what good comes from teaching people to glorify killing, or watching people being killed? Death is inevitable and war may be part of our nature, but it is our ability to consciously evolve  that makes us human.

As 2011 draws to a close, and we prepare to symbolically enter a new era of human consciousness, I truly hope it is one in which compassion paves the way for evolution, and not merely our own extinction.

Whole Lotta Koz Goin’ On!

The Pottery 90210 Holiday Sale was a tremendous success! What an amazing experience, to spend 5 consecutive days working with a group of people in a relatively small space, and have it be a fun, educational, organized, and successful event, without once encountering problems or flaring of egos. How refreshing it is to have adult friends who are actually grown-ups.  It was also the first time most of my art has seen the light of day, and I got some really great feedback. The whole experience was an affirmation that I have been on the right path, and I look forward to having another big art sale in the Spring. Meanwhile, our temporary gallery will remain open by appointment until the end of the year.

But now it is time to clear away the clay dust and make way for sparkles! Tonight I will be dancing for the first time ever to live music in front of an audience. Well, maybe not ever. There was that whole thing that happened at the Tinariwen show. But this is going to be a real performance: costume,  zills, veil, the whole nine yards.

The only live music I’ve ever performed to was with the Ben Gunn Society, but that was not bellydance. Tonight I’ll be dancing in the American Cabaret style at Anaheed and Anja’s Holiday party in Granada Hills. In case you’d like to know more about where that style comes from, I just had an article published at FolkWorks magazine. I’m excited, but confident about tonight. I know Var and Ricco’s music really well as I’ve helped out at nearly all Anaheed’s major events for the last 5 years. That’s why a lot of dancers in the local community recognize me, but they can never remember from where, because I so rarely get up on stage. But I’ve been preparing to get back out there for a while. And of course, when it rains, it pours. A week from tonight I’ll be dancing again, to an Egyptian song at Club Cleopatra.

It’s like a faucet, this creativity thing. It builds up inside you, like you’re a well being filled with water from an unknown source.  You have to open a tap to let it flow out or it will only leak out in messy and unproductive ways. I’ve been trying to hold all this stuff inside all my life, bulging at the seams and leaking terribly. I feel like for the first time ever I’ve figured out not just where the tap is, but how to turn it on without soaking or scalding myself. This is good.

Storied Land

I cried when they painted the school. I didn’t see it coming – no one did. The order had been put in years ago, but you know how that works. Our new principal wasn’t even aware that the district gears had been slowly grinding on this project for nearly a decade before her arrival. I showed up one day to pick up the Kozlet, just in time to see the workmen finishing up the job of painting every exterior surface of the school the color of flesh and blood. No, seriously. They called it “cashew” but I swear they were painting the walls the same color that used to be called “flesh” in the crayon box, while the doors had all been painted an awful rust color. Apparently I was in the minority, however,  as the only parent who had actually liked the old exterior. The building’s main hall is a wonderful example of classic L.A. architecture, and to me the pink and green paint job had exuded an air of old Hollywood glamour fitting to the area’s history. But I guess you can’t halt the wheel of progress. At least it’s turned out to be a good school, even if it’s been painted to resemble a giant pimple.

Around the same time I was mourning the old school facade, I noticed a lot of old landmarks were going downhill.  Hollywood has, until very recently, had no respect at all for its own history. Buildings constructed back in a time when such things mattered, that would have aged gracefully, are of no use to a transient population who only want to make a quick buck. The weirdest thing is, once a place has been rebuilt, it’s hard to remember what used to be there, especially when every third block has been razed to make way for another Walgreen’s. I still miss the Studio Wardrobe Department, though. It was originally a warehouse in an old building at Hollywood and Highland, but that burned down at  some point and the site  turned into a big mall. The salvaged contents were moved down the street and squeezed into a much smaller space, which became stuffed to the gills with everything you could possibly ever need by way of clothing or costuming, with prices starting at 25 cents. For a long time I wasn’t that keen on going there because once the owner yelled at me when I tried to look in the mirror to see if a coat I was interested in looked OK on me. It turned out he had a strict rule about not bringing the 25-cent clothes inside to look at in the mirror. So I paid a quarter for an ill-fitting coat that I eventually gave to Goodwill. But after the Kozlet was born, I started going there all the time, since it was only a five minute walk away. Kozlet would play happily in his stroller while I tried on vintage dresses and looked for interesting items to cut up and reassemble as new creations. Once I had to dress up my whole family in Renaissance costumes, and in a single trip I found everything I needed, including one large and one tiny leather vest for the Kozlings,  and a woolen one for myself. And when the small creature started taking dance classes, I found enough black jazz pants there to keep him outfitted for several years.

Eventually the Kozlet started going to school, and I took to wandering into the shop on my own once or twice a month, often in the evenings on my way home from class. On those occasions, the owner would always be present to close up for the night. He, of course, had no recollection of yelling at me, and I certainly didn’t mention it. He was always cordial, if a bit distant. One night, he seemed particularly moody, and sensing a sympathetic ear, started telling me about his life. I listened patiently while he told me his story, and then he took out his wallet and showed me a picture of his children. One of them was a dead ringer for the Kozlet. My jaw dropped, and I immediately started fumbling for my own wallet to extract a picture, a school portrait taken earlier that year. Holding the pictures side by side we fell silent. They could have been photos of the same child. It was eerie. Finally we put the pictures away, and I purchased my stuff and went home. But after that the owner always seemed happy to see me when I came in. He’d come over and chat, ask after the Kozlet, and offer me discounts or just let me have stuff for free, especially if it was off the kids’ rack. I brought the Kozlet with me once or twice, but he was old enough by then to be bored by clothing stores, and I think it made the owner a little uncomfortable. The place wasn’t doing too well either, and there were some real weirdos creeping among the racks, although usually they were just the employees. It was pretty plain the place didn’t have long for the world. They tried to resuscitate it by allowing a reality show to be filmed there, but that didn’t help. I avoided the store during filming, even though I was explicitly invited to both the taping and a related party. That whole reality show thing just freaks me out. When the coast was clear, the store’s  inventory had been thoroughly depleted, and the place shut down not too long after that. The owner told me that he was moving what was left to his other warehouse, somewhere in the valley, a real schlep compared to the pleasant stroll I’d enjoyed. Another one bites the dust. Now it’s a yoga studio.

So about three years ago, right about the time I was weeping over the school’s new paint job,  a singular individual known as Trippy the Hippy, who lives in the equivalent of a tie-dyed yurt on a glacier, asked me to post some pictures of Hollywood – my Hollywood – on Hippymom.com. I went out with my camera, intending to shoot some of my favorite spots. But I realized when I actually hit the pavement that virtually nothing was at all the way I remembered, and most of the places that meant anything to me were gone. The few things here and there which remained only made my heart hurt with nostalgia. I started taking pictures, and realized that the reason this city feels so unreal all the time is because it’s not made out of bricks and mortar, but stories. A few of which are mine to tell. The idea of the Hollywood Hermit was born that day.

The first picture I took, of a house in my neighborhood that I am in love with. I'm pretty sure it was one of the first houses in Hollywood.

The view from my favorite table at the Bungalow Club, a little hideaway that Mr. Koz and I used to sneak off to for happy hour. Once one of the best kept secrets in Hollywood, sadly it is no more.

Here Comes the Rain Again

A couple of days ago I woke up to pouring rain. Rain! In L.A! We actually do get it a few times a year. It’s like going through a car wash. You know, one of those mechanized conveyor belt contraptions, sort of like a mini amusement park ride in the middle of the city. Kozlet and I love those things! The one we go to has these massive, hairy looking, pink and blue rollers that rush at you from every angle. Some just bash repeatedly into the car, while others whirl around madly like insane dervishes that are trying to tickle you; meanwhile all kinds of noises and flashing lights and cascades of colored soap give the whole experience a carnival madhouse flavor. We call it “Attack of the Giant Muppets.” I let Kozlet sit up front and we wave our arms and yell the whole time. Anyway, my point is, it’s fun, but doesn’t actually get the car that clean, and you know that pretty soon it’ll be be all grimy and have bird poop on it again. That’s L.A. in the rain.

The main problem is that it rains here about as frequently as I wash my car, which is to say, hardly ever, and the city simply isn’t designed to handle large amounts of water. If it rains steadily for more than a day, the roads turn into rushing rivers. I’ll never forget one night when I was still in college. It was my birthday, and two friends from art school were taking me out, although I had to drive since I was the only one with a car. Our destination was a creepy coffee house that used to be in the Knickerbocker Hotel. Considered one of the most haunted buildings in Hollywood, lots of famous people died or went insane there, and Houdini‘s wife used to hold a séance on the roof every year on his birthday after his death.  The guy who ran the cafe, who had been a child star back in the day and never quite got over it, was a total jerk, but the place was still really cool. The room had this kind of gothic art deco thing going on, with half the space devoted to racks of vintage clothing and jewelry for sale. They served great coffee drinks and had a pool table set up in a little anteroom that was decked out like an old-fashioned movie theater. As long as the owner was asleep on the couch, which was most of the time, it was a really fun place to hang out.

That night it was pouring not only cats and dogs but frogs and guinea pigs, I mean it was really coming down. We were creeping slowly along a secret route of steep little side streets in my decrepit old car, the Frankenstang. The tattered wipers hardly made a difference in the downpour, and we all heard it before we saw it: a great roaring WHOOSH from behind and then we were engulfed in water halfway up the sides of the car, which lifted up off the road and began to float downstream, in the direction we were already going. All three of us were laughing our heads off at the absurdity of the situation, especially when we realized we were not alone. A line of similarly incapacitated cars was floating majestically ahead, like a parade of giant bath toys. Another vehicle gently bumped into us from behind, causing us to drift helplessly into the bumper of the car in front of us. Slowly, the train of cars drifted down the narrow street until at last we approached an intersection, where the flood waters gurgled away.  The Frankenstang lowered back down to the pavement with a slight bump, and we continued on our journey as if nothing had happened.

The worst part about the rain is that people here don’t know how to drive when it’s wet. The first few minutes are the worst, when the water hits all the oil and other crud on the street, making it extra slippery before it gets washed away. Then you’ve got all these type A personalities speeding around while shouting into their cell phones. They’re not about to slow down for a little thing like rain. It’s no wonder that you hear more sirens and see more accidents on rainy days. What I don’t understand is, if so many people in L.A. are transplants from places that actually have weather, shouldn’t they know more about driving in the rain? Or is there something about the combination of sunshine and gasoline that makes people forgetful?

I didn’t feel like going out driving in the downpour, but I needed a haircut, and Kozlet was looking forward to the outing. I realized when we got outside that we really needed some boots.  I realized that the last time it rained, but by the time we got to the store all the boots had sold out, since everyone else in town had also just realized they needed some boots. Then, of course, it had stopped raining and I forgot about boots. Now as we neared our destination I noticed that the gushing water at every intersection was higher than the curb. There was no place to park in front of the apartment and the only spot I could find was a block away. At first we had fun jumping over puddles, but the puddles started turning into lakes, then streams, until finally we were trapped, with no way to go but through the rushing river. Kozlet and I decided to make a break for it, and with hearty yells we forded the temporary tributary. At the end of the street, we saw the source, a spectacular waterfall crashing down a flight of steps outside an apartment building. The Niagara Falls of Hollywood! Try going over that in a barrel! By the time we got to my friend’s place, we were soaked, but giggling. I accepted some dry socks and warmed up with a cup of hot cider, then my friend cut my hair while our boys played, as the rain continued to pour outside.

When it was time to go, the rain had eased up slightly, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant to put on our wet shoes and trudge through the damp back to my car. Kozlet was complaining, and I was telling him to hang on, we’d be home soon, and there would be dry clothes, a heater, and a hot drink. That’s when I caught sight of the bedraggled hump of a human being, huddled under a ragged blanket, trying to keep dry in the doorway of an old building. Suddenly I wasn’t just looking forward to a cup of hot tea, but filled with gratitude for my comfortable life and my loving Mr. Koz, who works hard so that Kozlet and I have a place to live and food to eat, and I have the freedom to create art and dance and do things that make me happy. I don’t ever want to take these things for granted because who knows, one day it could all change.

This year I am grateful for so many things. My aforementioned family, who make me so happy that I want to dance; my apartment, which is just big enough to dance in; my cat, for being so fuzzy; my friends, teachers, and mentors, who have believed in me even when I haven’t; and you, for taking the time to read these words. Happy Thanksgiving!

Pottery 90210

I am tremendously excited to announce that I am having an art show with my friends from ceramics class!

We’re called Pottery 90210 because our studio is in the art department of Beverly Hills High School. For something like 60 years, BHHS had this great adult education department, but last summer they decided to cut the program. It looked for a while as though we would lose our space.  But thanks to the hard work of our intrepid leader, Jeffrey Johnson, we managed to keep our studio. I have been working alongside this great group of artists for something like four years now, and this is the first time we will be displaying and selling our work together.