Photo Essay: The Big Parade Day Two (Silverlake)

When I embarked on the longest walk of my life last weekend by joining the annual Big Parade urban hike, I was worried about the distance. If I was able to complete my ideal route from Silverlake to Griffith Observatory, the distance would clock in certainly over my previous record, nine miles in Anza-Borrego.

But even after hiking nine miles a couple months ago, I could've kept going.

The thing is, it's actually only 4.5 miles from where I parked my car in Silverlake to the Griffith Observatory - not even as the crow flies, but by normal driving directions - but that doesn't account for all the public stairways that are compulsory to climb on The Big Parade.



And Silverlake has plenty of them.



Fortunately after climbing most stairs, we took brief rests in the shade to learn about the route, the local history, and architecture.



At a nice moderate pace on mostly wide streets, there was plenty of time and room to stop and photograph the wildflowers and landscaping without holding up the (quite enormous) group.



As much as Silverlake is characterized by its pubic staircases, it's also a land of many hills...



...which we would seemingly climb both up and down just for the heck of it.



Our circuitous route took us past any number of dead ends, private streets...



...and roads whose only outlet was, in fact, a set of stairs leading up or down one of those hills to cut over to another winding street above or below.



Some of the stairs are well-known, like the Music Box steps made famous by Laurel and Hardy...



...but many of our pathways on Sunday were part of the secret life of Silverlake, that only bold residents who set out to explore ever actually discover.





The thing is, if you actually look into the distance, up into those hills, you can often see the stairs cutting into the hillside like a ski trail or fire break, like a manmade scar in a mountain, like the Antenna Trail across the street from the old Corralitas Red Car Property, the other side of the historic viaduct where trains no longer run, but you can climb your way up to Waverly.













We meandered throughout Silverlake, adding miles to our trek, up and down staircases at every turn, up and down hills only to return back to our starting point...



...and took a well-deserved lunch break at Silverlake Rec Center by the reservoir...



...which is bordered by several architecturally significant modernist structures, namely by Richard and Dion Neutra, the father-son architect team of the mid-20th century.





And unfortunately, though many of its stairways are still open to the public, Silverlake has plenty of closed and decommissioned staircases in perfectly good condition...



...waiting to be climbed.


Stay tuned for Franklin Hills, Los Feliz, and Griffith Park.

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Photo Essay: Neutra's VDL II Studio & Residences

I got the chance to visit Richard and Dion Neutra's VDL II case study house (the reincarnation of the burned-down original VDL in the same footprint) about this time last year, but I didn't post any of the photos. I didn't think they were very good.

But on Sunday during Day Two of The Big Parade, stopping by the VDL II and Neutra Place and actually meeting Dion Neutra, I realized I had to share my glimpses around the building's interior and roof. So many visitors to the Silver Lake Reservoir pass by this lovely structure all the time and have no idea of its significance or beauty. Even on The Big Parade, we didn't get to go inside the VDL II (or anywhere else).



The facade probably looks familiar...



...but from the street you can't see the unique exterior features, like where the reflecting pools should be...



...or the outdoor patio...



...or the floating stairs to the sky.



As with many Neutra designs, there is plenty of glass to let in lots of natural light...









...and some unique interior features, like a tiny elevator...



...and an intercom system.



The VDL II has seen better days: the reflecting pools run dry, their gravel beds soaking in the sun, while several areas of the working studio and residences down below could really use a bit of a facelift.

And it's one of several Neutra structures that characterize the (somewhat hidden) modern architecture of Silver Lake, an area of LA which has inspired many modernists (Schindler, Lautner, in addition to Neutra) for the last 50 years.

Related Reading:
Photo Essay: California Dream Homes

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Keep On Moving

I walked the longest distance of my life yesterday.

In fact, at over 17 miles, it's the farthest I've ever gone without the aid of a motorized vehicle.

And today, despite my hobbling out of bed, the funniest thing happened: I wanted to keep walking.

I wasn't sure I could do it. I set out to walk the longest distance of my life yesterday, but all I really promised was that I would "try."

But when it came down to it, there was no "try," there was only "do."

At just past the 13 mile mark, nine hours after my departure, I reached the goal I'd set for myself: Griffith Observatory. I collapsed onto the soft grass under the eclipsing sun, and hugged my knees to my chest for fear of lying down and never getting back up again. I rocked myself back and forth gently, almost imperceptibly. And a few minutes later, I got back up.

I wandered around the observatory grounds, onto the terrace and throughout the building, not sitting again until I decided to take the shuttle bus back down the hill to return to my car.

After 40 minutes' worth of waiting, a traffic officer reported that the shuttle would arrive within another 20 or 25 minutes. By then, the sun was not only eclipsed but also setting, chilling my sweat-sticky skin. Coatless and dinnerless, I was freezing and starving, and couldn't wait any longer. I had to keep moving.

Enraged, I bounded down the observatory driveway to Vermont Avenue with a vengeance, passing every other pedestrian and stroller on my way. I kept thinking I'd catch a cab, or find a bus, but determination pushed me forth, my legs free in their movement. My feet weren't tired, and the heat that had plagued my sweat-soaked forehead earlier now warmed my muscles, preventing them from cramping. I was loose, elucidated, invincible. I could walk forever.

Fortunately, I didn't have to. It was only another 4.5 miles to my car from the shuttle bus stop departure point.

I marveled at my stamina, my legs taking on a life of their own despite the advancing darkness and the menacing night air. I couldn't imagine how blisters had not erupted on toe, ankle, heel. I ignored the chafing that had eluded me until that point. I never saw a bus to catch. I never saw a cab to hail. So I just kept walking.

I withdrew cash from the ATM.

I ran into an ex.

I stopped for a margarita.

And I kept walking, all the way back to my car.

I wanted to walk so badly, it felt odd to cram my legs behind the wheel of a car, to pivot foot and flex calf to depress a pedal, my two legs no longer working in tandem to move me forward, instead being propelled by some non-ambulatory force.

When I finally got home, 11 hours after I'd started, I dreaded how I would feel in the morning, anticipating a paralytic recovery period, or worse yet, insufferable pain revealing the hypoplasia of my musculature, which should have never been subjected to such a marathon. And sure enough, I didn't sleep very well, my mind riddled with bad dreams and irrational visions, my essence aching in the shape of a fetus. But when I got up and began to waddle out of the pain, the craziest thing is, I felt better.

I felt stronger. And I was starving.

Having lived for decades now with fibromyalgia, I've learned that the worse thing you can do for it is the thing you want to do the most: rest. Sore, sensitive connective tissues suffer the worst after inactivity, so instead of staying in bed which is what you wish most for, you must push through the pain and keep moving, anyway, anyhow.

I got out of bed today.

I swam on my lunch break today.

I wanted to walk some more today.

And as I get ready for bed a second night after my epic walk, I'm afraid of what will happen if I don't.

Related reading:
Keep It Moving
I May Be in One Place But My Legs Keep Movin'

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The Persistence of Memory

What is it about humans that inclines us to commemorate events, no matter how miniscule?

Why must we celebrate the date of our births, and why is it so damn important to us?

Why do we find it necessary to honor the date we got married, graduated from college, moved to New York, started a job, lost a job, or buried a loved one?

It might be nice if it were only in homage to celebratory milestones, or tentpole events of some gravitas, but we humans - or, perhaps, just we women - torture ourselves with the persistent memory of every minute detail of every relationship gone wrong, every lost lover who has most certainly forgotten the minutia of our brief time together.

But this commitment to memory doesn't just apply to the epic fail relationships, but also to the tiny blips, the small fractures in an ever-breaking heart that eventually turns to dust after enough disappointments pile up, disastrous in aggregate. Even if we don't remember the exact date (because it doesn't fall on a holiday or have any other point of reference), we remember that it was around this time last year that we booty-called this person or had two dates in the same night or met a kindred spirit or mourned a number of unreturned calls or stood up dates.

If you're lucky enough to have a relationship that lasts a while, you remember every detail of every encounter with surgical precision: the night he met you and your friends in Brooklyn, the night he first took you home, the night you kissed on the subway platform, the morning he made you oatmeal, nursed your head injury, and didn't want you to leave...

And to look back on those events as though they're important, to recall them for more than just the sake of chronology, is simply masochistic. Each of those anniversaries are probably ones only you celebrate.

As though our minds (and our sometimes distorted memories) weren't relentless enough, we have dozens, perhaps hundreds of saved emails and text messages and voicemails to scroll through on rainy afternoons, late sleepless nights, and lonely weekend mornings to remind us of the nuances we might have otherwise allowed ourselves to forget. We have Facebook likes, comments, wall posts and photo tags for those lovers who have not yet unfriended us. We have drunk tweets, check-ins, and, in my unfortunate case, blog posts that chronicle every painful and joyous movement and development of our lives. Through technology - probably ever since the advent of the Palm Pilot - we are able to construct and dedicate a comprehensive timeline of our lives once reserved only for the very famous.

Isn't it better sometimes to simply...forget? Can't we turn a painful vignette into a wrinkle in time, and pretend it never happened, instead of living forever in memoriam?

How can we preserve the lessons of the past in our brains and hearts - je me souviens - without remembering every single detail with such clarity that the simple act of recalling the memory reinflicts the original injury? Or worse yet, inflicts a new injury upon a heart that once swelled happy during the original experience?

I've tortured myself plenty of times poring over old diary entries detailing various romantic traumas, and then one day, I left one of my handwritten journals in the seat back pocket of a US Airways airplane, delirious from having napped the entire flight. Initially freaked out and mournful, I soon became relieved at the loss, because that entire notebook was full of breakup ruminations. And without that notebook to remind me (having already swapped out cell phones with all the old calls on it), I could let it - and him - go.

I used to keep a handwritten list of every guy I was physically romantic with, annotated with symbols and abbreviations to classify them by how physical I had been with them, and with any other characteristic descriptors (from Latvia, in Ireland, on the bus, etc.). And at some point, I just...stopped. With that, I've forgotten some names and details (though admittedly my list is growing at a much slower pace than it used to), and I'm sure I've forgotten some people altogether.

But if someone is really important, deeply affecting, so much so that you can't get them out of your head,  maybe it's worth remembering every look they ever gave you, every word they uttered, every flutter of lashes against your neck.

Even if it hurts to do so.

Even if you're the only one.

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Nowhere Woman

After spending six nights in New York City, on two different couches and one bed, and two more nights in Syracuse in a bed I visit twice a year, I have come to the definitive conclusion that I am as much in Limbo now as I was for the five months I spent in Ryan’s spare bedroom in Queens, with most of my possessions packed up in storage, on my way to moving to California, just uncertain of exactly when.

Back then, when I would spend a week or two or even just a few days in LA, I would miss it terribly upon my return to New York.

When I came back to New York this time, for the first time since Christmas, I didn’t miss LA so much.

I didn’t miss New York, either. It felt like a stranger to me, like a place I’d visited in a dream. I got lost on the subway and took the wrong train, twice in one evening. I became befuddled at Penn Station. I asked for directions. I took a cab both to and from the airport instead of struggling to lug my bags up and down staircases and escalators, across the gap and off of curbs.

I was neither a tourist nor a resident.

I kept my watch on West Coast time, but I didn’t think about the West Coast very much. I didn’t miss anyone there. After all, I was with the people that I’ve been missing for over a year since moving.

I did miss my car. I missed my bed. But those don’t have much to do with where I live.

I managed to feel my heart break for the second time for a person for whom I would probably stay in New York if he wanted me to.

When everyone asks me, “How’s LA?” – or, more likely, when New Yorkers ask me, “Really? You like it there?” – I say, “It’s great,” and I mean it. But what I really mean is, “It’s great, for now.” I don’t know that I’ll spend the rest of my life in LA. I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle the loneliness. I’m not sure it’ll ever get better. I’m not sure I’ll be able to find a job there that I love.

“Are you there for the rest of your life?”

“I have no idea. I mean, I would certainly move somewhere else for love…”

But what I would do and what I would ever have the chance to do are two totally different things. You have to be given the opportunity to make a choice before you choose.

And I’ve already chosen to leave my life behind and start a new one from scratch somewhere else. I’m not about to do that again anytime soon. At least, not by myself. And I’m not about to move back to New York anytime soon. At least, not by myself. There are only a few things I won’t do alone, and those are amongst them.

At least, for now.

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A Mother-Not-to-Be

This Mother's Day, in the year that I turn 37, I'm not thinking about my own mother so much.

After all, it's been over five years since I've even spoken with her.

Instead, I'm thinking about the mother I'll never be.

I never wanted to become a mother. I was miserable throughout childhood, and couldn't imagine inflicting life on another defenseless human being. I couldn't imagine turning into my mother upon giving birth, something that was sure to be an irreversible, unavoidable fate.

Back then, when I protested the mere suggestion of future motherhood, my father would say to me, "One day, you'll love a man so much that you'll look at him and say, 'I want to have your baby!'"

"Ewwww!" I would say. But it's a scenario that's always lingered in the back of my mind. Throughout my adulthood, I've always worried if my desire to lead a childless life would interfere with sustaining a long-term romantic relationship, or with embarking on a marriage. When I've filled out online dating profiles, I've always ticked off the "Not Sure" option when asked if I wanted kids, just so as not to detract those guys that might someday desperately want to have kids with me - that might love me so much that they'll look at me and say, "I want you to have my baby!"

Turns out, it hasn't been an issue.

Turns out, it probably will never be an issue.

I have foolishly waited years to love someone that much, when in fact, no one would ever love me that much.

And as much as I still don't want kids, as the years pass, as my potential maternal age becomes more and more advanced, I become increasingly upset over the loss of opportunity to have kids.

Because it's very likely, when I surpass childbearing age, my childless life will not have been a choice. I will have never had to turn down someone who wanted to get me pregnant. I probably won't be able to change my mind, even if I wanted to.

Oh sure, I could always choose to be a single mother. Any woman can get pregnant by random sperm. Surrogacy and adoption always provide alternative options. I can do many things on my own. I can juggle multiple identities. But if I can barely imagine loving someone so much that I want to have their baby, I cannot fathom ever wanting to tackle motherhood alone. I don't dare subject a baby to my sad life of loving alone.

My mother always told me and my sister that she had us because she wanted someone to love her, finally. That didn't work out so well for her.

I refuse to make the same mistake, assuming that any offspring I bring into this world will, by nature, hate me, as I hated my mother. But, as the person who would prefer to try trapeze and fail, I'm increasingly disappointed that I'll never have the opportunity to try and find out. Because just as I'm the one who goes to the movies, hikes, dines, drinks, and loves alone, in parenthood too I'll have to accept that the position of my accomplice will be in a permanent state of vacancy.

If don't have to accept that right now, I will, very soon.

Related Reading:
To All the Mothers
The Best I Ever Had

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Photo Essay: Andrew Freedman Home, (Almost) Abandoned (B&W)

The Andrew Freedman Home on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx has stood abandoned since the 1980s, but recently a renovation project has unearthed a number of relics, many of which have been incorporated into various sculptures and installations as part of an art exhibit called "This Side of Paradise" which has opened the grandiose house up to the public for the first time in decades.



During my week in New York, I had to visit.



I went a little farther than I was allowed.



Most of the rooms on the third floor - one floor above the exhibits - are still peeling, crumbling, tattered.



And what little is left in them is of little worth.









So what you really feel is who's missing...



...the elderly, formerly rich who lived out their last days in style.



Related Reading:
Photo Essay: Andrew Freedman Home: (Almost) Abandoned (Color)

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Photo Essay: Andrew Freedman Home, (Almost) Abandoned (Color)

The Andrew Freedman Home on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx has stood abandoned since the 1980s, but recently a renovation project has unearthed a number of relics, many of which have been incorporated into various sculptures and installations as part of an art exhibit called "This Side of Paradise" which has opened the grandiose house up to the public for the first time in decades.

The ground floor's now-converted ballrooms-cum-galleries look relatively occupied: painted, scraped, swept, kempt.



But there are signs of its age, and of the decades of neglect from which the residence now emerges...



...in the corners...



...upstairs...



...up-upstairs, beyond the "No Access" ropes.



Or is it just another art installation?



Related Reading:
Photo Essay: Andrew Freedman Home: (Almost) Abandoned (B&W)
Photo Essay: Inside Governor's Island
Photo Essay: Mr. Brainwash Art Show 2011 Closing Night 

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A Missed Calling

When you're a person of many interests in life, you have to make some choices.

Back in high school, I was equally as interested in - and good at - math and science as I was art and literature. I would have just as well written a poem as solved a calculus problem or dissected a fetal pig.

So when I went to college and pursued my first love as an English major, in order to explore some electives that weren't offered in high school - philosophy, religion, psychology, women's studies - I had to sacrifice some other disciplines. I favored taking classes like Embryology and the Philosophy of Law over mathematics, French, and art. I crammed as much as I could in, majoring in English and minoring in Biology, but there's only so much you can do.

I haven't really missed math much. I've missed French so much that I've signed up for an eight-week course at the Alliance Francaise, which starts next week.

A few years into my tenure in New York City, I took an art class as soon as I had a little bit of income to spare, and delved into the world of book arts, printmaking, and bookbinding. I was good. My teacher told me to stick with it. And I told her I feared that as soon as the class was over, I'd give it up.

And that's exactly what happened.

I hadn't really missed it since then until this week, when my return visit to New York celebrated Edith's graduation from Pratt, earning a Masters in Historic Preservation amongst a bunch of art school students. Sitting in the awards ceremony and commencement, I found myself kicking myself, thinking, "I should have gone to art school."

It actually never occurred to me before, though throughout my childhood, I was always a prolific artist. I always did well in art class, especially painting and illustration, and I've always been able to sew, do collage, photograph, graphic design. But it never seemed like it could be a career for me. I knew I could write, and maybe someday I'd write for a living, but wasn't everything else just a hobby?

But now, years later, 15 years into my career in the music industry which is decidedly not creative despite the occasional ad copy or press release written, I'm wondering if I've missed my calling.

Should I have gone to art school? Is there a (new) career I could (have) pursue(d) in the arts?

My therapist in New York always referred to me as an artist, dismissing some of my more pathological thought patterns and behaviors as being a result of my creative side, but I always thought that's because I'm a writer and an actor. Are those two hobbies enough to make me an actual artist?

And if I'm already an artist, do I need to go to school for it? Is there some woodworking technique out there that I'm meant to apprentice?

Or should I just accept that whatever path I'm on is what it is? I've got plenty to learn in life. I can't quite imagine going back to school but I can't quite imagine sitting behind a desk for the rest of my life either, cooped up in an office, spinning my wheels, isolated from the world...

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