Thoughts of Cross County Shopping Mall

I was driving home tonight from a friend's apartment. Maybe because it was a New York Transplant friend I happened suddenly, at the corner of Fairfax and Fountain in Los Angeles think of a Saturday sometime in 1980. I was 25, and still living at home, home being a nice two bedroom on the edge of Riverdale, but not in Riverdale, near the Jerome Avenue Reservoir. Fort Independence Hall the small complex was known as, on Giles Place. I had just graduated law school, and gotten my license. But not a job. And I was restless. A little embarrassed to be living at home, without a job, supported still by my father, truth be known, and realizing that if I were overprotected, it was my own darn fault! I had only recently learned to drive, and the opportunities to test my nominal skills were few. I got into a bit of a snit, and announced to my father, always concerned about the evils cast about by the fates, that I was taking a "drive". Big stuff. Djinn takes a drive. Into the car, a red Plymouth Volare, and off I went to directions as yet unknown. I couldn't think. I got on the Deegan, North, I think. I actually don't know the highways in New York, and did not then, because I never drove; I took trains or busses, or relied on the kindness of my friends' who did drive, and I found myself at the place pictured here (except without the construction vehicles), Cross County. I think that Macy's was then John Wanamaker's, but I can't be sure. What I do remember for certain was parking the car facing outward, toward the highway, and trying to decide, "What's next in my life". I was already well into a thought of moving to California, but was afraid of such a big change. I was not one for adventures, having lived and attended school in spitting distance of the Grand Concourse, or Pelham Parkway, with a wild foray to Queens for Law School. I remember thinking I was trapped, that I was a coward and I'd be driving back and forth from Giles Place to Cross County for the rest of my uneventful life.

I was so certain of my doom as I sat in that parking lot.

The years may not have brought wisdom, but they have brought perspective. And as I made my left from Fountain to Fairfax I thought, I really had come a longer way than I could have imagined on that Saturday long ago.

Live Long and Prosper, Again, Star Trek!

Ok Mr. Anonymous of the Barbara Judith Apartments and Mr. Len Speaks, I couldn't wait. I did it. I had to do it. And I don't regret it. And I still plan on this weekend, maybe, but for me, it will be a necessary second viewing of "Star Trek". And a new generation it REALLY is! Thursday. A packed house. The Arclight. I think this is going to go through the roof! And for some reason, despite the fact that I will not in any way benefit from the financial remuneration, I am delighted. Please don't be mad, boys. Lest I explain myself. Well, I'll try anyway.

Time warp back to circa 1965 with me. "Oh, no, not again!" you might say. Come on, let's go just for a few minutes. I think we were there last week, when I was having a summer flashback. And one more time! Everyone at Mount Saint Ursula was already watching it, what is now known as "TOS", the "Original Series". I hadn't yet, but I was deatermined to do it, and one night caught the show about half way through. The first face I saw was that of the apparently slightly jaundiced Mr. Spock, in love with Leila and trying to get Jim Kirk to stay on Omicron Ceti III and live the uncomplicated life. The man had pointed ears. I was intrigued. That was the episode "This Side of Paradise" Captain Kirk got back to the struggle, costing Mr. Spock the love of his life.

I was an only, and lonely, child, not unlike a million other kids no doubt and so the fact that I developed a fantasy life in which the family of Star Trek, Kirk, Spock and McCoy, was my center, is probably no big reveal. Mostly Spock, of course, the alien, the alienated, fitting no where and wanting to fit somewhere but not able to say so and always trying to prove himself.. And their comraderie was one of which I could become a part, without judgment.

I never went to any of the conventions, and I never bought a phaser replica--not that I am incapable of it--but I was a rational Trekker. But I harbored the desire to see the series revive and when it did in 1979, I was happy, though disappointed by the product, which tried to do Star Wars and forgot the relationships that made the show unique, the thing that gave me a sense of hope during dark-ish times. There were only a couple of the movies that really worked after that, Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, but mostly The Voyage home. But it didn't matter. They were back. And then more than a few died. First Gene Roddenberry in the early 90s, the Daddy of the enterprise and the Enterprise. Then Bones McCoy in the last of the 20th century. Then James Doohan, recently Majel Barrett Roddenberry.

Maybe that was part of the rush to go after work on a Thursday night. I need to know--would it be disappointment or a new lease on space fictional life? And I felt like maybe I'd be touching two parts of my life, the one from then, that little girl who had no idea where her life was going, and the one that is now, and merge them in some way, a way that made us both whole. I know. A little too existential over a sci-fi series. Maybe.

They had a task before them. Capturing a new audience that was not slightly intrigued by the cheesy inexpensive sets and camp from a decade they are a half a century beyond, and not alienating the boomers who took the canon to heart. It was unlikely they could do it.

But of course, idiot, there IS a way! I won't be a spoiler. And it allows them to use the canon and still change it with good reason, the best reason that there is! Deus ex machina it may be, but it allows for all new adventures, but with the relationships intact. With a bridge, a live bridge, between old and new, in Mr. Spock, Prime (the first Mr. Spock) who is definitely the wise, old Ambassador. Doesn't need the make up anymore. And, you can still have the modern explosions galore!

The actors work, at least to me. By the end, I was satisfied that this was the Enterprise crew, no less than their TV predecessors. And the Spock boys, what a good selection for a successor in every physical way. Even some of the deviations (let's just say Spock II has a better love life this time around) did not jar me. I heard a guy behind me while I was getting my parking paid, about my age, with two younger 30 somethings in tow, say that it was ridiculous that a 17 year old Russian (Mr. Checkov, adorably played by Anton Yelchin) was at the helm of the massive ship, and a guy just out of Star Fleet was being named the captain. But then, we do have 18 year olds in Iraq commanding battalions and saving at least a small part of the world. The movie presents the most heroic of their ilk, no? Myth always presents as bigger than our real lives. That's what attracts us so to it.

There were things at the beginning that tested my faithfulness, but then, as it moved along, I saw that the new had combined with the old and produced a Hollywood child.

Why did I have to have to see it alone, for the first time? I don't know in any certain way. I wanted to have the experience, good or bad, in my own world, my old one, my current one, without influence or contradiction from anyone I knew. And I wanted to like it, so I did not want to hear, just now, that they did not, if that were to be the case. Maybe I was going back to those old days, frequently alone with my own thoughts, and hopes, and dreams for something big and interesting, and heroic, and warm in a way that was just not possible in the Bronx in the 1960s, no matter how hard anyone tried. The audience was into it, and I liked being part of it, without judgment. Joy at the first "Fascinating" from Spock or the first furious objection of Montgomery Scott at being asked to give more of the Enterprise than could possibly be given, but he did it anyway. Or the first, "I'm a doctor, not a ____" (name the job) from Bones McCoy.

I hope I like it as much on the second go round I am eager to have, even if my friends feel it is not up to their respective standards. Maybe because it was a kind of lifeline to me back then, and an old friend now, that seems very familiar and comforting. They are my crew now, when I want to feel safe and full of possibility.

Earthquake and Fire Weather

The wind is blowing in a way that I have always identified with winter weather, except it is like 80 degrees at 10 p.m. in Los Angeles. You can hear the furious whirring that can splinter 100 year old trees. I sat outside a little while ago, while it was still light, and I enjoyed the wild waftings and the blowing leaves. It did occur to me that given the sudden shift from cool and dreary to sunny, warm and swirling swoops of air, it is indeed "earthquake weather". I have a big, too heavy, bag behind some drapes in the living room, with likely out of date supplies. That's all I have. And a fear of having to leave my pets behind if the room starts to rumble. But that is just superstition, the idea of sudden warm weather meaning an apocalypse. Right? Darn well hope so.

I hear the wind chimes and danger doesn't seem close. Then "breaking news" that a fire burns in Santa Barbara, again, spurred on by the winds. I have a friend who has parents living there. I think mom is with her for an early celebration of a major birthday with her sisters. I am guessing Dad is still there. Is it in their neighborhood, backed against a beautiful but tree filled hill? I can only pray not. I'll call her in the morning and leave a message on her cell. It's not likely it is her family. But it's someones. Twenty houses already lost and no chance of reprieve as long as the weather holds, which it is expected to do through the weekend. Early summer in LA is a contradiction. A joy for the prospective beachgoer. A tragedy for fireman and home owners.

It's quieter now. Still, even. Ominous? Or a goodly sign?

I just checked on the cat inhabitants of my backyard, two owned by my neighbor upstairs, one, Elwood, inherited by me when he ran away from my next door neighbor and took up residence under the house. I seem to be the only one who can actually pick him up. The little crew just begged crackers from me. They don't seem to be acting as if there is danger in the land. They say that animals can tell if an earthquake is coming. Well, these little creatures could only tell that food was coming their way when I came outside. That calms me. They calm me. I may sit outside again for a while and let the wind, which has kicked up again, whip about me reminding me of the power of nature. Despite the destruction that can be wreaked, there is also the feeling of awe at He who is behind the natural world, with its caresses and its blows. "The world" said Gerard Manley Hopkins, "is charged with the Grandeur of God." The world of Los Angeles is certainly well charged tonight!

The Calling

No, this entry is not about a current rock group. It is a reaction to an article in the legal newspaper, The Daily Journal, about choosing the law, and whether it is a calling, as in vocation, rather than a career or a job. The distinctions are pretty obvious I guess. If it's just a job, it's about getting the paycheck and doing what you have to do. A career, well, it's something you think you are really good at and feel you have a chance at excelling and moving up the tortious ladder. If it's a calling, well, it is rather a mission, a quest, if you will, to make the world and the relationships among society's denizens more palatable. The author correctly noted that these three categories may overlap in one's life. And one observation made me laugh heartily, when the author noted that the lawyer profile includes a low level of spirituality. Thus, began a few moments of consideration of where I fell in the job vs. career vs. calling categorization. And to tell you the truth (a preface which some psychologists say means you are probably lying), I haven't got a clue which is prominent, if any.

I was 14 when I made the initial decision that being an attorney was my path. No one in my family was a lawyer. I was shy. But I was verbal, and the one thing about being a girl of Mount Saint Ursula was that the nuns, even before the woman's movement, encouraged us to be whatever we wanted to be through education. I guess I was thinking "career" though I would not have articulated that to myself in quite that way. In college, some four or five years later, I ran into the college radio station and THAT was for me, except for the fact that it would not likely mean any money, for a long time, if ever. I loved the studio, the microphone, talking to others without having to face them, if I really examine it. So I went to work after college for WXLO, 99X, it was called, in New York. A friend from college was music director, and I became his assistant. It was kind of him. But the work, if I could call it that, was mind numbing, the same 40 songs on the list week after week. There are just so many times you can hear "Magic Man" even if you love Heart. Six months later law School beckoned, with its promise of a safer career and maybe a regular salary. I responded lethargically pressed by parental anxiety about a future as a bag lady if I did not do something with more concrete future. So, I applied to just two places. And got into one.

I did not like law school. I endured it. It was the late 70s and the teachers all thought they were Professor Kingsfield in the Paper Chase. My school had a conservative grading policy so that I was in the top third of the class, but my average was a C+. No one wanted to hear about how they graded when I interviewed. I ended up in a tiny law firm with a screamer for a boss. We were now in job territory. Strictly a job. A very low paying job with no benefits.

I also wanted to be TV writer. With my then partner, Len Speaks, I had visited William Morris many times to see our agent, Andy. Saw Jack Lemmon in the elevator. Andy did not have the goods to be an agent. And our visits were purely academic exercises. Andy just wanted to show traffic in and out of his office. I heard he left that business. It wasn't his calling I guess. Me? I decided to move to California intoxicated, as my then boss pronounced, by palm trees and oranges. It was more the weather and the ridiculous idea of fame and fortune as a comedy writer. I'd pave the way, and Len would follow when we sold a script. Law was now a means to an end. I think I was still in job mode. And I wasn't writing any scripts. Setting up a household and making ends meet became pretty time consuming.

There is little reciprocity state to state, so my NY license was of no value in California. I had to take the Bar here. Which meant I had to have a job, so I could get an apartment, to pay for the fee for the Bar exam, so I found another small firm to be a secretary/law clerk while I studied and proved myself yet again to be worthy to be among the legal eagles of the sunshine state. The practice I found myself in, in California, like New York, was not what the hallowed halls of academe led one to believe in order to keep them in library books and new wings. I was an amusing anachronism to my skirt chasing, gambling boss who took any case in which money was paid up front. I got my license in California. (That's me at the Masonic Temple on Wilshire Boulevard where I was sworn in in 1983). He offered his guidance, "You're going to have to learn to stretch your ethics." Ah. This was even worse than the internship across from the Bronx County Courthouse a few years before, where my mentor had me place a bet at OTB. At this point, we are barely at "job", but it was paying the bills. And I was still hoping for that career as a writer. Of course, I was too tired to write when I got home from work after a day keeping the boss from losing the files and forgetting the clients. I learned a lot about what I would never do. I would never have a private practice.

With that realization and the long and winding road working for others, including one famous person, in his waning legal days, who called me the "paralegal" and had to be propped up, except when a camera was pointed in his direction, an ad brought me to my current role a a kind of prosecutor. In the 80s, career would have been too strong a word given what they were paying and the civil servant cache. But it was more than a job. And given my emotional and philosophical disposition, it was closer to a calling than I had expected would ever be my fate.

And, always it has remained, close to a calling, but never quite there, with intermittent frustration, rage, and disillusion at just how horrible people can be, I have stayed in this place for 23 years and counting. I am one of the lucky ones.

Still a lawyer.

Train Thoughts

Last night, I was sitting at this very desk, sweating with the still lingering spring heat in Los Angeles and making an entry on my companion blog, "Legacy of A Courtly Curmudgeon". A truck rumbled too fast up the narrow street outside. The sound sent me back to my little Bronx bedroom on any July or August summer evening, just after the sun had gone down and the sidewalks still radiated their day-long exposure. No computers then. I might have just shut off my portable record player. Could be 1966. It isn't just hot, but ponderously humid and we don't yet have such as "conditioned" air. We have the standard swooshing fan that just moves around the warm.

My bedroom looks down on a long yard, nothing more really than a back alley, and faces the back of the building on another street. Kids, lingering at play despite the calls to "come upstairs, shriek, in finishing a game of tag. My parents' TV is going in the living room, Saturday night, "Mission Impossible" is just starting with its characteristic Lalo Schifrin theme and the lighting of that fuse. I am crazy about Barbara Bain and Martin Landau, the really married couple who play colleagues and spies extraordinaire. I'll get out there in a minute. A man in that other building, I think it is one of the upper floors, is playing his violin. He plays it often and well, but the sound always makes me sad. I don't know why I think it is a man. I have never seen the musician, but only heard his song. A cat is yowling near the garbage cans. My father calls me, "Aren't you coming out to watch the show?" My mother and father like it too, not like the Monkees on Tuesday at 7:30. That they could do without.

And then, one more sound, about four blocks down towards Jerome Avenue, but still loud on a quieting day into night, the steady rumble/click/rumble of the El on its way to Woodlawn Station. I don't know why that sound is comforting. I have no place I want to go right now, except into the other room, where Rollin Hand is donning his latest disguise and Barney Collier is bypassing some phone lines. All those years ago.

Susan Boyle and "Church Ladies"

The linking of Susan Boyle, the amateur middle aged Scottish singing contestant, with the more pious among the churchgoing will become clear. I hope.

You may recall from the digital piece that has made its viral way through the net that when Ms. Boyle came out on the stage, the audience and one of the judges immediately snickered. The woman wasn't young. She wasn't stylish. She was arguably overweight, at least by television standards that add the proverbial 10 pounds. Her eyebrows presented in their pristine wildness. She was to the glitzy panel and the knowing audience, an obvious oddity. What could SHE possibly have to offer to the sophisticated world? As we now know, what she always had and gifted the scoffers who judged her visually peculiar, was a mystical voice. No longer could they justify the question of their first amused cognitive dissonance, "Surely this is a joke, for why would such a woman as she, be here?" She was there, because she could actually sing and because she honored her mother.

Things will happen for her now. What she will be in her new milieu, already post Larry King and the establishment of blogs in her honor, remains to be seen. But she put me in mind of other people who are dismissed out of hand, but don't have anything tangible to offer to provide them an entree into credibility in a world that fears the simple, or the pure. I count myself among those who try, but often fail to give them credibility. All they have to offer is their persistent and visible faith. And that offering makes the rest of us profoundly uncomfortable. With Ms. Boyle, there is the "Oh, isn't that wonderful, she can SING!" With those who praise God by say, going to the Monastery of the Angels after a Mass for a service in honor of Divine Mercy Sunday (brought to us by a young polish nun, Sr. Faustina, who had visions of Christ and wrote simply about her love of a Compassionate God), we are more inclined to think, "Isn't she just a little too pious?"

And, like myself today, off to Mirabelle to brunch, we go back to our secular world having had just enough spirituality, but not too much to make us stand out in any way, and have people look at us with a bemused smile of "She's just a religious nut." Someone I knew once said that anyone who made the sign of the Cross as he or she passed a Catholic Church was crazy. But, from her point of view, the signer was giving acknowledgment that inside that Church is our Holy of Holies, the Real Presence of Christ. Actually, this is my point of view too. I don't do what she does, not because I don't agree with her about Who is under that roof but mostly because I just never was trained to do it and never got into the habit. I do wonder though whether a little part of me fears being identified too much with my faith such that my own credibility as a college grad cum law degree and rational mind be endangered and it is more convenient to say I am not in the habit. Occasionally, I have been with priest friends who did grace before a meal in a restaurant and I was just a little bit nervous about being seen doing it, and making the sign of the Cross. I worry about looking, well, quaint. And I certainly don't do it when I go out with other friends. But like Susan Boyle willing to come out and be laughed at by the world, the Church ladies (and there are more and more young couples, male and female going in this direction) go out onto their small world stages and let the passersby or the customers or the thinkers, laugh uncomfortably.

I think the Church ladies may have the last laugh. And maybe it's time that I said grace when I had dinner with friends, out there, where everyone can see.

He is Risen, Alleluia!

It is amazing how readily we get into new habits, or out of old ones. I could have made an entry bright and early on Easter morn, but I had become nearly used to not blogging and so, I did not rush to it. I even considered that I would not continue at all.

But, here I am again!

I don't know if I'd call it a "good" Lent in terms of any spiritual growth. I "gave up" other things besides this blog. The grape, that is, vino, and spirits. Meat. And eating my favorite desserts. I was not perfect in my resolve on those very few occasions when I was somewhere where the menu had, for example, chicken or where a bottle of wine was especially purchased by another to celebrate. I chose, as one friend said, "charity over abstinence". I will admit that it wasn't hard to make that choice. But mostly, I stuck to my promise of restriction. It is not the giving up of something that is the object; it is a tool toward reflection on the sacrifice of the Lord and preparation for His (and ours in the fullness of time) Resurrection. The small giving up on our part should open the door to some giving to others, to cooperative action in the work of God. Did I achieve it? I don't know. I do know that the several services I attended and the words I heard and the Eucharist I received made me hope for my metanoia, for a true emptying of self. A beginning. Now if I only could restrict the anger that causes me to cuss with a reflexiveness that surprises me, as if I were not the person engaging in the offending (albeit often in the privacy of my car or room) act.

In other ways, the season was both dramatic and affecting. A woman I had come to know in my faith community was the victim of matricide. Her death and burial during this time of reflection on the ultimate death and burial of God made Man was a sad, yet profound experience. I had been reading a great deal about and of Flannery O'Connor and it somehow seemed like one of her stories, this stabbing death of a religious woman who tried to shield her children from evil only to have it come directly into her home in the guise of her schizophrenic youngest, likely in the throes of a psychotic break. O'Connor wrote about such grotesque denouements to highlight the potential of Grace amid how did she put it, "territory largely held by the devil." The day of her funeral was the anniversary of my father's death, a chilly, blue sky, puff cloud sunny day. We stood on a hill in the cemetery, at the later interment, each of us given a white rose from the painfully beautiful mahogany coffin that would soon be under ground, wind blowing amid prayer and profession of belief of what is promised beyond what we see through a glass darkly, the Church on earth and the Church in Heaven. I took that rose to the mausoleum where my father is interred and said a few words of remembrance there. I felt hopeful. And even happy.

And happier still as Good Friday gave way to Easter joy in remembrance that He is Risen.