sketching in a Phoenix bowling alley

I finally got my scanner!

Tunisian trip recollections (part one)

Driving the I-10 from Los Angeles into Arizona, heading from the desert watered to look like paradise and into the desert as it really is, in doing so stirs up these old memories I'd putten away and forgotten. For example, if you ignore the windmills and the road signs in English just outside of Palm Springs, it's just like the ride through southern Tunisia heading into the Sahara.

I think about being packed into a rickety minivan with several other people heading for the same city. The driver was a happy old man who smiled and waved at us. As always there was a merry casette mix tape of loud Tunisian folk music playing, louder and louder. Later I would buy two or three of these in the airport and then a few years later leave it in the stereo at Renate's, the comic book collective I volunteered at. People loved to sing in Tunisia; in the minivan the men hummed and moved their hands.

I was travelling with someone, and he took care of all the communication, because for one, he could speak French and I could not. And secondly, it was difficult for me to speak to men in that place, as friendly as Tunisia was. It is not a difficult country for women to travel alone in, and the place is barraged with thousands if not millions of European tourists every year. But they liked to yell, "Japanese!" at me.

It was also the kind of relationship now where I realize that men who are boys like to pretend that they are men, and they like to reassure you and show you how things are going to be and assure you that they will protect you, but they are just as confused and unsure of themselves as you are. It's a burden young girls place on men sometimes, and it creates all sorts of stress and confusion as these boys, or maybe it was just this one boy, tried to fill out the spaces and be that kind of man for me. At the time I was too self-centered and weak to notice this, and that's why things turned out the way they did much later on.

The women sat in the back, smiling at me but not saying anything to the men. They were very polite though, and said only as much as they had to. They did not always wear veils; even with veils they were carefully made-up, and I felt a secret connection to them. I wanted to speak to them, but again, I could barely get by in French and of course I could not speak Arabic. Many people there spoke German very well and English, but it was always the men, and if the women could, they did not offer to do so right away.

The tourist towns were full of vacationing tourists from France and Germany. There were many older European women who went around with very handsome young Tunisian men. Later at the airport I would see the men kissing the women and giving them bouquets of flowers; the women, suntanned and happy, looked so vivacious and full of good memories. The spark was back in their eyes. Perhaps it was about money, but there was some wonderful thing that the men had given back to these women; companionship, perhaps lovemaking. It was the special thing that someone like Jenna gives to people, fill out the empty holes and needs that we do not always get by default.

The bazaars were full of baby camels, Tunisia t-shirts, rugs, and water pipes. Every day sunburned tourists in scanty clothing gathered there to go shopping. We went there together, that boy trying to be a man and I, and I would hold his hand and let him talk.

A gigolo pounced on us and took us to tea, speaking in perfect German, speaking of how he loved German women, how he could get a place to stay in the town even cheaper than our hotel, and how he could arrange a tour for us into the desert with camels and berbers. I remember being incredibly shocked at how handsome these men could be; cologne and dark skin and good hair. In speaking, the gigolo was also willing to share with us tidbits of his life. He preferred life here in this tourist town to life in the countryside. Here things were exciting, they happened, and he enjoyed the fun German women whom he would escort to the disco. He was an honest peacock, and very good at what he did.

Later we were stranded for a time in the town where they filmed the desert scenes in Star Wars. The sand people's houses were the underground homes of the Berber minorities. This was a huge selling point, and we arrived late at night at one of these towns; the hotel had a big "Star Wars" sign, and crawling down into the tunnels was a charming experience. The doors were rickety and wooden; we lay down on the bed, dirty and exhausted. The beds were comfortable but medieval, and the bare wires led to a naked light bulb flickering against a cracked mud wall. To our chagrin we could hear every movement and word of the couple staying in the room next door.

The next day we tried to catch a ride to the next town, but the way things work there is that you have to sit in a private car and wait until it fills up. The town's only tourist attraction were these hotels and the Star Wars deal. It was wealthy from all the tourist money, and there were huge four story homes with satellite dishes. We wandered up and down the narrow streets, got lost, then drank endless cups of tea with the men lounging around. Not many people could speak French; a confused British tourist couple bumped into us but they were heading in the opposite direction. The woman wore the shortest shorts I'd ever seen, and her legs were blindingly white. We all felt out of place, yet we were so in place in the mechanics of the town's economy.

Through the whole process the boy who was not really a man but trying to be one, well he was guiding me around, herding me here and there. It was a very stressful experience for the both of us. I think it gave him a sense of purpose, which he guiltily enjoyed, but he had also fallen in love with a headstrong and independent woman, so it just added to the confusion. Relationships are always about the push and pull of what you like, then what you are not supposed to like but guility like, and all these random explosions of personalities and experiences that are so unpredictable. He could never understand me, none of them could, although, unfair as it was, I had an easier time understanding him.

It was the first time I experienced Ramadan. The mullahs calling out from high mosque towers, the frenzied activity of people selling clothes, one of the Ramadan traditions. At sundown the restaraunts were packed with people eating ferociously, breaking their fast. It was a time of families, and we both felt suspiciously lonely, because there was a lot of coming and going and hugging of people who had known each other for generations and whose families knew each other for generations. All day long the stores were closed and everything was a ghosttown, but at night everything everywhere erupted into life.

At times like those I wished feverishly that I had been born Muslim or Jewish--a very weird thought, right? Because they had so much ritual in their religion, and as my Jewish friends in college told me, ritual was such an important part of believing. Even the Muslims and Jews I knew who did not seem to believe so much, who went to trance parties and wore miniskirts and smoked and drank, they still had wonderful rituals and parties and songs. They celebrated their holidays with a joy that I felt lacking in my own holidays.

And yes, it's so strange that driving through Arizona would stir up so many thoughts about those times. There was a lot about Tunisia that really wasn't that different from Arizona, and it would surprise a lot of people. I still cling to the idea that most people have basically the same desires--the desire to love and be loved, the desire to see new things. It's just so interesting that we turn out in such a way that we all feel we are so strange and different...

Adrienne Rich poems

Song

by Adrienne Rich

You're wondering if I'm lonely:
OK then, yes, I'm lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawns' first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it's neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning

from Twenty-One Love Poems

I

Wherever in this city, screens flicker
with pornography, with science-fiction vampires,
victimized hirelings bending to the lash,
we also have to walk . . . if simply as we walk
through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties
of our own neighborhoods.
We need to grasp our lives inseperable
from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces,
and the red begonia perilously flashing
from a tenement sill six stories high,
or the long-legged young girls playing ball
in the junior highschool playground.
No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,
sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air,
dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding,
our animal passion rooted in the city.

II

I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you've been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I've been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone . . .
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carried the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.

III

Since we're not young, weeks have to do time
for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp
in time tells me we're not young.
Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,
my limbs streaming with a purer joy?
did I lean from any window over the city
listening for the future
as I listened here with nerves tuned for your ring?
And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.
Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark
of the blue-eyed grass of early summer,
the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring
. At twenty, yes: we thought we'd live forever.
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.

my stickers land in Brazil...

Part of the ongoing Sticker Project... my stickers landed in Brazil, in Sampa! Sao Paolo! Thank you Tom B, this makes me smile...

After a month of intense culture shock and a lot of strange experiences, I'm finally landing on my feet--and, struggling not to be too bubbly, Los Angeles is even more than I ever expected it to be and crazier than I could ever have imagined. I truly feel that I am in the right place at the right time, in a city of the twenty-first century, and all of the hidden surprises that I discover every day inspire me in every way. Coming here was a complete risk, and I'm happily surprised that I took a chance instead of taking the safe route.

I just ordered a scanner (when did they get so cheap?), and I've been meeting so many interesting creative people lately... expect some really great things! You cannot do anything great unless you are very naive and crazy or both.

I cannot even begin to recount what I've seen--it's just so much. Everything inspires me here--the architecture, the landscape and especially the people... I'm so fascinated by Los Angeles... it's like being in love with a very tormented, brilliant and beautiful woman who can turn ugly at the switch of a hat--always so fascinating, yet always surprising you!

valhalla & dirndl doll

the girls of valhalla say: "get thee a scanner!"

three angels

there are these three Japanese angels in a shop crammed with pink knee high boots, old lacy sundresses, undercover agent hats, and smart mailman shirts. i love walking into their shop during my lunch hour, and i love the immediate sensory overload of looking at all the belts and shoes and shirt patterns dripping from hangers down the ceiling to the floor.

They sit three in a row like fairy nymphs, good manners and good posture and immaculately creative hair. One with a wash of dredlocks, one with a clara bow bob bleached pale brown, and one with an incredible blonde creation gelled up into a pompadour. It's at moments like these that femininity reaches its highest form.

There are so many ways to be a woman, but so many ways that strike me as confused or excessive, but in its highest form it's a delicate construction just like loops of icing on an elaborate birthday cake about to topple over.

Dear lady, your hair is so beautiful? Who cuts it for you? How do you get it like that? You have such a wonderful style.

Their laughter, so breezy and confident, yet couched in mystery. The two smile as the one scrawls down a phone number on a piece of paper. Even her handwriting is delicate and beautiful; her smile makes you blush, the real kind, not the kind you have to paint on like the kabuki queens at the Chanel make-up counter. She asks nice questions about my life.

And when I walk out, the hangerfuls of dresses swing back and forth framing the three women like a bright painting.

nights in Los Angeles

getting a late night eat at a cheap Japanese fast-food restaraunt on east Beverly, trying to get the woman's attention over the loud exclamations of the Latino punk teenagers in the corner of the restaraunt calling at her at the same time... they're her friends, and she's trying to act like she's actively working, but it takes her a while to get my order as an older man scowls from behind the corner at me.

i love the kids though. they're so racuous and crazy. they're like a love and rockets comic book come to life; everything I thought so wondeful about Los Angeles came true, weetzie bat mixed in with hopey & maggie and Mexican punk rock shows bubbling with life. A chunky girl with weird glasses, corn rows and combat boots leans on the fast food worker, then looking at us guiltily yells at her friend, "Hey guys, quiet down, man!"

It's so sweet that I look like such a straight old lady that they'd want to behave for me.

The teenagers are such good kids, jumping around in creepers and chucks and gossipping and throwing pieces of paper at each other. People keep running in and out into the darkness; boys are always carrying skateboards around, thick dark hair tucked under baseball hats. Seeing them, I'm hit with nostalgia, but back when I was their age it was ok to smoke in restaraunts, and I remember going through entire packs of clove cigarettes at the Denny's and reeking like something nasty.

***

Walking home from the club, we're holding arms to each other, and we just can't find the taco truck. The security guards here are so friendly; I can't imagine having these casual conversations with total strangers in Europe, at least not to the same degree that I do here. And that's why I love America so much, despite its faults. On the other side of Hollywood

Los Angeles is just so vibrant and magical in a way that I can't explain. The whole world is here. It's so dark, passing by the ghostly industrial buildings painted with Lady Guadalupe looking down on us like a pretty greek icon.

There are church doorways spilling a happy dancing crowd light onto the street in buildings that don't look immediately like churches. We can see boys in suits and ties dancing with their parents, and girls hugging each other with fluttery polyester dresses from Forever 21. I don't know how they can dance in those heels, their feet must be dying, and do people really look sexy when they're teetering around like that? Most women can't dance sexy in heels, they always mess it up, but these girls can, it's a special gift given only to a select few! The music blasts out but fades, weakening just as the bright yellow party lights fade out until there's only night swallowing the happiness and life.

Against a steep hill there's a huge bus with a smiley face painted on it behind the fence. Who would just abandon a truck there? And then paint it white? In the dark, it's ghostly, and it was a long long time ago when it was up and running. There's a peace in its acceptance of its death. It would be really funny if, when I die, they put up a tombstone with a big smiley face above my corpse, just to add a little humor to the situation like all those witty wild west limerick gravestones.

Against the end of the street, some men have set up a grill, and they're selling something delicious. I have no idea what all these foods are; Mexican food is a bad scene in Berlin, and coming to California is like jumping into a technicolor world of food, so much so that I can't stop eating and my pants don't fit after a few weeks. There's just so much to try out and not enough time to do it all. Men and women gather around, but I can't tell if they're going to buy anything or if it's just some informal party; I like how they are shadowily unidentifiable...

But then you finish passing these islands of light and life and then you only have each other to cling to. And the cars that zip up and down the empty road. I try to explain to him that cars are in another time dimension. You have to careful crossing the street because pedestrians move in slow motion from the driver's point of view. What you need is a time machine mixer just like DJs have to match the beats and make everyone safe.

Berlin is in another time dimension, and that's why nobody from there could understand why a place like Los Angeles is so beautiful. It's just running on a different beat, and rarely does anyone have the sense to push things together that don't entirely match, and it's moments like that that I feel a bit melancholy, because sometimes i don't think that there are many people who can see things the way I do, or maybe my head's just put on strangely.