Maid Therapy (and a request for assignments!)

I want to be the kind of person whose apartment is worthy of an ApartmentTherapy.com nod. Instead, I'm becoming someone Ellen Hovde and Albert Maysle might want to film. Since my father passed away, the one place I allow myself to wallow is at home alone. Sadly, I leave behind evidence: unwashed floors, unwashed dishes, neglected cat pals, etc. I waste away, growing a marsupial fat storage pouch, watching episode after episode of Weeds. At this point, with all my thrown together odds and ends, I'm no candidate for an Interior Decorator of the Year award, but I’d settle for an Honorary Very Clean Apartment Award. The first step in conquering a problem is admitting you have one, so I'm making a public confession to de-scandalize my shame. I've scheduled an appointment with a maid for next Tuesday. If I can't get my shit together, I'll pay someone to help me. Maid therapy!

And from this stepping stone, I hope to reestablish an area in my home for creative endeavors such as drawing, writing, and the like. I've discovered that when you lose someone you love you can lose a thousand little pieces of yourself along the way. My family, Erik, my friends, and my work are the thread that keeps my stuffing from falling out. But at home, where I lack both energy and impulse, I unravel. I entertain by distraction so I don't have to think about missing a man who was both a father and a best friend, a person who took up a lot of space and time in my life.

In my eulogy, I said, “The problem with loving someone who has died is that it feels so unrequited.” What was true the week he died is true now. It’s not enough that I was lucky to have had a father who loved me and was proud of me when what I want is a father who loves me and is proud of me in the present tense. I need to move past this useless want so that I can be happy with the lot I had, which was tremendously special and good. More, I need to recognize that what I had then is part of what makes my life so wonderful now. I had a father who helped me to make wise choices. My regrets are minimal in no small part because of his influence. He was also an artist who nurtured my own work, and I feel like I'm staring into the face of his memory and smirking at it.

My life before my dad died is very similar to the life I have now. It’s like two parallel universes kissing. What's missing from this one is the passion I once had for creation. I love my family the same, my boyfriend the same, my job the same, my friends the same, but my lonesome self bores me. I hate being by myself. For a girl who was once fiercely independent, this is very troubling, hurtful, and confusing.

So…I am enlisting help from those who care about me. Send me your marching orders, please. I’m taking requests, looking back at my school days where assignments were handed out, and while completing those assignments new inspiration would emerge and my own would work flourish. Tell me what to draw, tell me what to write, and I’ll select the assignment I want to work on each week with a hope that this will resuscitate my dimmed brain spark. I’ll use social media to share the results, if there’s an interest.

Your pal,
Audra

Nascar

Nascar
Originally uploaded by Stuffin' It

More experimenting with iPhone photography.

Taxidermy 1

Taxidermy 1
Originally uploaded by Stuffin' It

Experimenting with iPhone photography.

Non parlo Italiano.

While walking to the bus stop last week I was accosted by two Italians in need of some assistance. They were attempting to travel from west Los Angeles to Hollywood; I couldn't understand most of what they were saying, but fortunately they had a map with their start and end points clearly identified. They were going my way, right down to the last stop.

I’m a veteran of the public transportation system in L.A., a city known for its crappy public transportation system. I give Metro more credit than some, because it’s not easy being an authority on public transit in a city where the car is king. Before 1940, Los Angeles had one of the nation’s finest streetcar systems, but invention gave rise to the internal combustion engine. Despite a reference I came across that claimed GM (and other auto-related companies) conspired to profit by buying up and dismantling local transit companies, that that isn’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I love public transportation, but I don’t take it because I think cars are evil. Go Metro is getting some good word of mouth these days because of Villainous Big Oil, which they are happily exploiting in billboards all over the city.

Many people are quick to point out the shortsightedness of our urban planning, which envisioned sprawl without the consequences. Live and work separately, but only a hop onto the freeway apart! Population growth and traffic jams are nothing but science fiction! Downtown couldn’t possibly dilapidate, I mean, just look at those movie palaces!

Agreeing with the aforementioned “many”, it gladdens my heart to see Downtown’s revitalization. Every city should have its converted loft apartments and skid rows, urban guerilla farming and rooftop gardens, sweatshops and bars like The Edison. I like my urban centers to be a capitalist cocktail of the entire economic spectrum, and Downtown is on its merry way.

I would love to take people on a tour of Downtown Los Angeles, starting in the morning and continuing through the evening, straight on till dawn. And from Downtown, one can hop on the subway to Chinatwon, Pasadena or Hollywood. There are short bus trips to Silverlake and Santa Monica. Possibilities swimming in Endless.

But I met the Italians on a weekday night and we were headed to Hollywood proper. I live just around the bend from the Chinese Mann Theater and the Hollywood Walk of Fame (and Shame). There lies the Hollywood Wax Museum (I love it) and the Hollywood and Highland Mall (s'okay). They had a one night layover in Los Angeles and Hollywood was where they wanted to be. I always feel a bit sad for tourists who come here and only ever see Hollywood. They walk away perpetuating the myth that Los Angeles really is an ugly tinsel town, because they arrive with hopes and dreams of the Golden Era and what they see are buskers in faded, dirty costumes, star names on filthy sidewalks, homeless drunks begging for change, cheesy museums and lots o’ movie theaters. This is hardly the heart of Los Angeles. These few blocks aren’t even the best that Hollywood and tinsel town have to offer, because some of it really is still golden.

Even the grime would be fun to show off if my companions spoke enough English to understand snark and clever asides, or a factoid well placed here and there as we walked. I suppose I shouldn’t feel too bad, since they really did seem pleased to see Paul Newman’s star. I was hoping to stop by The Roosevelt, a true Hollywood gem, for an overpriced cocktail and architectural tour, but one of the Italians didn’t drink and neither had any interest in restaurants or bars, and something I do love about Hollywood is its restaurants and bars.

Sometimes I felt bad that they were stuck with someone who knew not a lick of Italian. We spoke to each other in incomplete sentences and illustrating with hand gestures. I called a friend from the bus to see if she could interpret, but that didn’t work out too well. On the second bus, we ran into a man who could speak Italian. And Spanish. And Portuguese. Judging a book by his Best Buy employee t-shirt, I was rather surprised. If I spoke multiple languages fluently, I wouldn’t be working at Best Buy. Of course, maybe he’s perfectly happy. Maybe he has a chill job, lives cheaply, saves all his dollars and is actually a world traveler. I once knew a bus driver with that story. One doesn’t have to work at the UN just because he’s multi-lingual.

Eventually the Italian tourists and I walked towards Vine and circled back on Sunset, ending our excursion at those horrid tourist shops near Highland where they could buy t-shirts for their younger loved ones and my patience was tested. They kept asking me what size? What size? I helped as much as I could without knowing European size charts or the children being gifted.

I think I enjoyed the long stroll more than my companions, but they were in high spirits and couldn’t be more grateful to have me around. Their relationship was supposedly new and platonic. He, a married man and grandfather. She, a spinster aunt with a cat. They claimed to meet while traveling. I suppose there was no lie in their tale, but I enjoyed imagining a romance.

We said our good-byes at a taxi stop. Kisses on the cheeks and hugs all around, their thank you, thank you, thank yous ringing in my ears. It was all so lovely in its randomness. A little mini-adventure to split up the humdrum work week, and all that’s left is a memory (already fragmented) and a blurry photo taken with my less than stellar Blackberry camera phone.

The gentleman's name is Bruno, and he was a subdued but friendly grandfather type. The woman was younger than Bruno but older than I, and her accent was thicker, her English less developed. She comprehended better than she could speak, but it was easier communicating with her companion. Sadly I wasn't able to commit her name to memory.

Nina Katchadourian

BoingBoing.net is truly what is says it is: A Directory of Wonderful Things. Regurgitation is part and parcel of the blogging community, I think. I read a post on BoingBoing.net and I reference it on multiple forums to bring attention to something that I find remarkable, beautiful, horrible, hilarious, ruinous, delightful - a little piece of magic in the real world…

More than anywhere else online, I find items of interest on BoingBoing and I’m relieved to know there are intellectual detectives out there working hard for us. They seek and find (as well as create) some of the best things life has to offer, similar to how the folks at Talk Soup seek and find some of the worst.

Also, more than anywhere else online, BoingBoing makes me feel woefully inadequate. There are so many people out there in the world doing awesome and creative things with technology, art, documentation and business, and they aren’t making excuses about why they never have the time. At least once a day I read an article that has me saying, “Oh, man, I wish I thought of that.” This puts a tango dance of excitement in my belly, but hasn’t yet put a fire beneath me. Within everyone and everything is potential, wasted or used. Here, in my opinion, is some beautifully used.


This work combines a love of reading, books, photography, derivative art, storytelling, color and brevity. It’s so simple, so seemingly easy to put together; all that was needed was the light bulb think bubble and some effort to find the right phrases and book designs to create something both lyrical and presentable. Makes my heart blush.

Maybe it’s brilliant. Maybe it’s gimmicky. Maybe it’s whatever you want. Every day I seek a “crush of the day” in the form of a work of art, and today this is my crush.

Bluestockings

A memorable dinner party, a slinky black dress, bluestockings, my favorite shoes and the Metro.

Have been playing around with this image, feeling inspired to build a website experience around it (I'm drawn to grids). Or, paint it. Or, design a girl detective costume around it for a series of indulgent self-portraits featuring imaginary misadventures in The Land of Milk, Honey and Offal. Or, work on a comic about a bluestockinged heroine with a ghost dog for a sidekick...

I'll sleep on it. Goodnight, moon.

Spring Cleaning

I do my spring cleaning in the fall. This year, I've decided to extend my spring cleaning into the online world. As I begin to attack my apartment (squalor!), my office space (semi-presentable), including my computer files at work and at home (a quagmire), I have also decided to clean out this rarely used blog and start anew. This seems to be my modus operandi when taking pen to journal in real life. I very often get fed up with myself and simply toss all evidence of my daily whining into the garbage.

So, I’m once again putting on a fresh face. As I dust the shelves and clean out the closets, I’ll also be re-skinning social media sites and updating profile pics. As I archive old work emails, I’ll be reassessing how I intend to use the magical interwebland as both learning tool and means of self-expression. I have a desire to share ideas in a public forum, but also loathe vanity projects like white Oprah’s GOOP. One must simply hopscotch through and see how it works out, I suppose. If it works, hurrah! If it sucks, Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

Perhaps this is just another attempt at coveting the woman I’ve always wanted to be rather than accept the woman I am. Perhaps I’m just trying to make an imaginary life more real. Well, why the fuck not?

I’ve spent this past year orbiting around the sun, happier than I've ever been before, but I think it’s time to take this spaceship back into outer space with two seemingly disparate goals in mind: Reality Check and Dreamland Exploration. And before and after the work whistle blows, it's time to get some real work done.