Where I Was From

February 11, 2009

California

I threw away my anchor necklace today. Who needs an anchor when you're already home?

December 07, 2008

Please stop calling me crazy for moving someplace as grand as Chicago

Last night I was invited to a dinner party at the home of someone I’ve been on a couple of dates with. I wasn’t quite ready to meet all his friends at once, but accepted out of curiosity, since he was cooking vegan food and was itching to prove to me that said food can be completely edible when done right. He was completely right on that account – I was pleased to see that lasagna and tiramisu can be completely amazing with zero dairy in them. I don’t really have a useful place to store this knowledge, but there it is, just the same. I also managed to sucker myself into daring that I could be a vegetarian for the rest of the month (with the exception of Soup Night next week, but not the holidays…ohhh, boy), but that was the fault of my big mouth, and I don’t blame him for being smug about that.

What really caught my attention at the dinner party was the fact that here were fifteen or so Midwestern folks who couldn’t stop talking about San Francisco for the several hours the party lasted. San Francisco as the greatest place on earth. “Why the HELL did you leave San Francisco?” ad infinitum. “The restaurants are so much better there,” they said over an amazing dinner a local person had just spent all afternoon cooking them with ingredients bought at Trader Joe’s, a store that can obviously be found right here in Illinois, as well as in their illustrious Promised Land. Trader Joe’s is the same there. Let me get back to you about West Coast sushi, but after living all over the country, I have to say that in general, life is pretty much the same in all metropolises.

Words I could have applied to the cities themselves. When it comes down to it, despite the beautiful landscape and the mild climate, when you live in San Francisco, you are still living in a city. You still have to work a job like any other and wait for the train (just TRY finding parking anywhere in that city besides grocery store lots. Want a space near your apartment? $150 a month. Sorry, no street parking, even at home). There are still dull people in San Francisco. Sometimes even the ultra-sophisticates the city is famous for are complete dullards – just dullards who are extremely well-dressed, and whose monologues are about music and performance art and their dietary habits. They are easier on the eyes than Midwestern dullards, who are forced to dress down because of our unforgiving winters, and for a while it’s difficult to tell that boring talk of creative ventures isn’t actually more exciting than boring talk about practical things like work and what’s in the news.

I can stare at the websites for Bay Area concert venues and miss them until I look at the bands’ own websites, where they inevitably list a tour stop here in Chicago. I can bitch about the cold, but honestly, when it’s foggy and the wind makes even 50 degrees feel pretty damn unpleasant, I wouldn’t be taking those constant jaunts through Golden Gate Park, anyway. You adjust to different climates with surprising speed. My parents have both spent a lot of time living in Minnesota and cross-country skiing, but living in Los Angeles has acclimatized them so they are now miserable at any temperature below about 55. I would be lying pretty hard if I said it’s not a huge imposition to stay mainly indoors for four months out of the year, but I do like having the four seasons. I hate wearing layers, but the snow can be breathtaking as a visual, even when it’s literally breathtaking in that a sharp inhale makes your head and lungs ache. The ocean is majestic, but so is the architecture in Chicago. Strangers greet each other on the street here, but in San Francisco, the only strangers that approach you are derelicts demanding your change – and they appear quite literally every few yards that you walk. The rent is as steep there as it is in New York, and forget the comforts you expect here, like wood floors, windows, dishwashers, and porches. There is a lot less of that, out there. The “yard” behind my last place was just a spot where the landlord kept the building’s garbage.

Earthquakes always seem to come up in these conversations, but I feel like I should mention them just to say that I usually don’t think about them unless I’m quake-proofing a new apartment, something most people I knew out there never even bothered to do. They’re terrifying, but what city doesn’t burn down once or twice? What of hurricanes, tornadoes, riots, terrorist attacks, and recessions? Every city is susceptible to something. Even Paris goes through some shit once in a while.

None of this should be taken to mean that I don’t love San Francisco. I do plan to return to California fairly soon. I live 2,000 miles away from my family right now, and I am not the kind of person who can stay so far away for life. But that’s what it is to me: home. Not heaven. Not a dream of escaping reality. It’s where my family is, and where I’m from, and for that reason – and that reason alone – it is, to me, unique in all the cities of the world. That’s really the only reason a big city can be different from all the others.

Labels: California, Chicago, memoir, travel

January 18, 2008

Book Report: Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder

This one goes out to my friends in Los Angeles, as well as those of you who've happily accompanied me to confusing places like the House on the Rock, The Mutter Museum, and the Barbie Museum.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology in West L.A. is exactly the project you'd expect Jorge Luis Borges to create if he got tired of writing and moved on to visuals. An exhibit on nineteenth century theories about memory leads into a hall of folk remedies and superstitions (mouse pie will cure stammering), a collection of tiny mosaics made from butterfly scales, sculptures that fit inside needle eyes, and so on. Bats that can fly through lead are represented. There's an exhibit on American trailer parks that resembles a study of ancient cultures like you'd see at a natural history museum. Climb the stairs to view a gallery of Russian astronaut dog portraits, wander into a tearoom full of women chattering in a foreign language (something East European?), excuse yourself, and head back down the stairs to attempt to sort your brain out.

I'd been wondering what the hell the place was supposed to mean for about a year and a half after visiting until someone mentioned Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder offhand and I immediately bought the book. Lawrence Weschler writes for Harper's (where some of the book originally appeared in essay form) and The New Yorker, and bothered to do some research after the museum left him equally bewildered. What came out of his research is a short and amusing history of museums in their original form, which was equal parts private collection (the art/science/natural history exhibits that we know and love as separate museums nowadays) and display of dubious curiosities (wonders from the mysterious east, including many, many human horns). The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a throwback to those sixteenth century "Wunderkammers" or wonder cabinets, and it's surprising to learn what's "real" and what's not in the museum - as well as what kind of person it takes to run such a place.

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology
by Lawrence Weschler
Vintage Books, 1996, 168 pages
Buy it here.

Labels: California, entertainment, travel

September 23, 2006

Pulling a Bilbo Baggins

So, it's my birthday. I've gifted myself with a Zelda haircut. I'm going to a party tonight that is only about 15% birthday-related, so I figured it would be tacky to wait til then and ask for everyone's attention to make my big announcement that I'm moving to Chicago in a month. It's not really my party, see. And I'd just end up quoting Bilbo's birthday farewell speech from The Lord of the Rings. I sure love an excuse to say "eleventy-first," but his birthday's September 22nd, not the 23rd. God, why do I KNOW that?

San Francisco: five years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable...hobbits. I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

*vanishes*

Labels: California, memoir

August 14, 2006

A few pre-trip photos

Home.

The Public Schools Administration Building. I love the faces.

City Hall + weird, crooked pole.

I am in love with my own living room decorations.

Living on borrowed kittens.

Kjersti "found grass that looks like a viking."

Off to separate shores - I'm going to miss you!

Labels: California, travel

August 12, 2006

An Open Letter to San Francisco

My friend, my foe, my jealous, malodorous lover:

I've been meaning to have a frank discussion of our intentions for each other for some time now, but certain distractions as of late have barred the opportunity for a peaceful dialogue between the two of us. Suffice to say, I never seem to have an accurate idea of where exactly we stand. The warmest of greetings seem thin veils that poorly conceal outright enmity in your squalid night spots. You keep handing me matches and still somehow you're shocked when I burn the party down. Quite honestly, you're behaving like a bit of a pill and it's time for you and I to see other people for a while.

I'll be back at the end of the summer, and soon we'll have it as grand as it used to be.

Yours solely in the legal sense,

-Leah