Six Weeks in LA in No Order at All

Glitter: I saw Maria Bamford at 3 PM for free in a tiny theatre with 6 other people. Oat milk lattes. Pink brick walls. Walk to the grocery store. Never need a coat, never get too hot. The pool, even if I have yet to dunk in, seeing it when I walk in and out of the creamsicle complex makes me feel like I’m in 1950s showbiz. Happy new used Prius. Scream in a cemetery—it shaped me and shows me, over and over, the power of women. Shant is here, and we can talk about the city we came from. The Poltergeist haunted house. An email from an idol. The library with the patio, the church with the incredible soloist. Long long honest Frank talks. The sushi house that is our own. The cream colored IKEA reading chair. Yosh and his date and my date. Walk-in closet and scale. A narrow way to kick off our shoes. The club I am in. The very good bosses and excellent co-workers. The shows I do. The ghost of a skinny kid who remembers he was stupid. Puhg bought me the tiniest pumpkin. It lives on my nightstand. How many times have I already laughed?

Gutter: How many times have I already cried? The cutest street is anything but at noon on a Saturday. Too many people. Too small of spaces. I have to sit down on a bench and breathe. Once you are living the dream there are fewer off-roads to run on. The highway can be boring. I made up a whole relationship with my brand-new bubblegum scooter and it died Day Two. I did set up a tiny CSI investigation and get a full refund. They said it couldn’t and wouldn’t be done. It was done. Brett Kavanaugh. I haven’t not thought of him a single day since moving. I want it to go away and I don’t want it to go away. That “did I share too much” feeling. That “do I even know who I am” feeling. THE NEVER ENDING PRESSURE TO BE A SMART WOMAN. The canopy of 2040 used as a punchline but so real, so real. I write this at my desk. Work is over, but I'm waiting for traffic to die down before I make my way to U_B to sing my guts out. We let people escape, I know, which I know is part of healing and getting better, but at the same time at what point should people not be able to escape? When they no longer can? I miss getting on stage and futzing around however I want. I never knew I could until I left, and now I know that's exactly what I could do and did (sometimes).

So Long Sweet Summer

It's Dashboard Confessional. I am not embarrassed. I wish it had never been laughable--the boys screaming their feelings. The popularity of emo could have been an antidote to toxic masculinity.

For every bright notebook aisle at Target, there's a new orange leaf. The darker sky. Six years ago I started grad school in Arizona. I spent most afternoons by the pool with my Theatre Histories textbook and a highlighter. Today I went to the gym's rooftop pool and read Chapter Three in my teacher's edition Theatre History textbook. It was windy, and I could only bear the chill an hour. I call the Senate Committee and my House Rep to say I support the DREAMers.

I've officially lived in Chicago longer than I was in grad school. This saddens me. It's not a surprise. I've been here, you know, watching the planner pages turn, establishing myself, signing leases. But still it happened so fast. I steadied myself on the last thing I had done. I had just moved from the desert. The other people I meet here--some spent one, two, five years in their cities, but it gets washed away in the machine of big shoulders. I join the slop.

From the moment I stepped off the plane in high school, it was my spot. It's my laptop backdrop. My blue and purple scooter plate hangs over my window. Yesterday Puhg and I went on a Labor Day run. We stopped halfway through just to sit and watch the lake. A baby regatta of boats, a seagull, a plastic bag splat into the water. He says the way I feel about our old place is how he feels about his new place.

Some days I feel it too. The neighborhood abuzz with teeny shops and how I can get from my couch to the A____ for a lime & seltzer with Flood in less than ten minutes. People feel overwhelmed by the city, but when I was in Maine I felt so weird not being able to, at any time, walk to a Walgreens. I do not think about trotting four blocks, taking the train, going down Michigan Avenue, spending thirty minutes in an interview, reversing the whole thing. It's so easy I barely pay attention. I jot lesson plans and ding my Ventra card. I'm at the library now and then I will go back across the street to my apartment, eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch, watch Friday Night Lights, and go do a show at i_.