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“trules speaks”, changing the world 1 student at a time

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

may 21, 2010

bucharest, romania,

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it started out with just the 2 of us. mihaela and i. sitting for lunch at a little wooden table at the “one” café, right next door to the caragiale film and theater university, where i’d been invited to teach for 2 weeks on a fulbright from my imperial government. it was the first day after the first class of solo performance and only 7 out of the 19 students had bothered to show up. half of them late. you know, “romanian time”. i had met mihaela on the street, after the performance of “hamlet” by the wooster group. we had both left at intermission. so tedious. sure, it was the imperious wooster group in bucharest, but still, boring is boring. of course, all the sophisticated, cultural glitterati were there. i even had the privilege of meeting mr. liviu cuilei, the 90 year old director-legend of romanian theater lore, who explained to me that peter brook’s “midsummer’s” was “ all white”, while his at the guthrie was all “red”.

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mihaela was with her bespectacled romanian friend, razvan, who had earned his notorious counter cultural reputation by standing up in the middle of yet another pretentious bucharesti performance event at the national theater and said something like, “do you really expect us to watch this shit?” he then walked out and cemented his infamous reputation in the hearts and minds of romanian artists everywhere. he did the same tonight (without the shout out), and the three of us walked down the street towards piata romana (one of the many beautiful public squares in bucharest, a little like columbus circle in new york or any of a myriad of others in paris, rome, bangkok/any big city with a vibrant pedestrian life). vlad took his leave, off to a dinner meeting, and mihaela took an uncharacteristic chance and decided to roam the streets with me, taking me to the museum of ethnic village people about half an hour away. by foot, naturally.

the food was authentic but disgusting (various varieties of pig fat, pig feet, pig innards, you know, the kind of stuff village people have to eat to survive the challengingly cold, romanian winters). mihaela and i shared a couple of silva bruns, a deliciously sweet, dark beer, a little like san miguel dark from the philippines with a slight taste of black strap molasses. coincidentally (are there really any coincidences?), mihaela was a woman in search of herself, while i was a teacher starting a 2 week workshop about self discovery though autobiographical story telling. i said i would make a call to my university host to see if we could include her at no charge, and hopefully i’d see her monday morning at 10 sharp.

on the way to the university from the subway stop bright and early monday morning, ioana, my perfect romanian host, and i actually ran into mihaela, walking from home to the workshop. apparently, we were, indeed, “on the same paths”. we all climbed the 5 flights of stairs to “pod B”, the attic of the old communist dinosaur of a building, and we met the 5 other students who had made the climb. they were all a bit embarrassed at the small turnout, telling me that “it was de last 2 weeks of de semester, dat all their student brethren had exams, finals, etc etc.” i said, “no problem.” at least they all could speak english and understand me. “let’s get started,” i enthused. i had seen this same under-attendance problem in malaysia 8 years ago on my previous fulbright residency. there was nothing i could do about it, then or now. it was beyond my control. just show up and do what i came to do. “build a field and they will come,” right?

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so now i had 2 hours between my 3 hour solo class and my 2 o’clock improv class, which i was assured “would be full”. with no car and no place to go, i took ioana’s suggestion and went to “one”, the adjacent café. “the food is good. and cheap,” she assured me. fortunately, mihaela had pity on me and joined me. just the two of us, the first day. the class had gone well. i gave them my usual 1^st day pitch, telling them, “you are all unique and amazing human beings and have fabulous stories inside you. you just don’t know it yet, and you probably have never been asked to look inside yourselves before for creativity, inspiration, and source material.” apparently it was true. how could it be otherwise? not that they all didn’t have these fabulous stories, urges, and ideas, they did. but this was communist romania, run by the brutal ceaucescu, as recently as 1989. one didn’t speak what one thought… unless one wanted to be marked and persecuted, maybe sent to prison, or eliminated altogether. no, you were part of the whole, part of the omnipotent proletariat. individuality, personal expression, these were self indulgent capitalist concepts, leading inevitably to self ruin, and to destruction of the omniscient state. i had my work cut out for me.

lunch is good. “chorba”, a romanian vegetable and chicken borscht. with sour cream. and freshly-baked bread. just like my ancestors had in the schetls of kharkov and odessa, before they made the trans-atlantic schlep to new yawk in the early 20^th century. mihaela and i sit across the little table from each other, and she speaks shyly about being a free lance journalist, recently “downsized” from her day job, opportunely making her free to search for her artistic identity and to explore her creative potential. she is completely charming…. in a gawky, six foot, long hair, romanian kind of way. actually, she is yet another “hippie girl” trapped in the wrong decade, but it makes her wide open to the preachings of a still renegade dancer-clown, steeped in the bohemian ways of new york’s avant garde of the late 60s and in the principles of tim leary, ram das, and all the other counter-cultural, we-can-change-the-world idealists of the baby boom “me generation”.

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after too much romanian coffee, we climb the stairs again, this time mercifully, just to the third floor, only to learn that their are no students at all for the improv class. instead i am invited to speak to a large lecture group waiting for their esteemed professor, apparently still on romanian time. “hey, you guys, my name is trules, and i’m a loud-mouthed american from new york and i need students for my workshops!” laughter. “no, i’m serious. you guys need to rearrange your schedules and come to my solo performance class 5 days a week so you can learn how to write and perform your own stories… and to improv class 3 days a week so you can learn how to lose your inhibitions, take risks, and live in the moment!” a few smiles, twitters, and murmurs. i can read their faces: “who is this guy? what’s he doing in our masters class, shooting off his big mouth?”

“any questions?” none. “well, look, guys, my unpopular american government spent a lot of money getting me here, and your university had the wisdom and balls to invite me here, so i think the least you can do is show up and take advantage of this opportunity. ever hear of the ‘train of opportunity’? well, here it is, right in front of you.” i move my left arm in front of them in slow motion, from stage right to stage left. “how many times do you think this train will come by again?” silence. “that’s right. maybe never again. so what do you think you can do about it?” one student seizes the day and shouts out, “get on it!” “that’s right. what’s holding you back? fear? insecurity? inconvenience. well, you know what i call all of them? ‘excuses’. there’s an old wise, jewish biblical expression that starts, ‘if not now…..’”. i pause…. but this time half the room shouts out, “when?” “that’s right! see you tomorrow at 10, eh?” and i walk off to a smattering of applause.

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the next day, i have 15 students up in the attic of pod B. in the bright morning sun streaming through the roof’s open windows, i try to teach them about “solo performance voice”, about “drawing the audience out of their seats into the solo performer’s world by being in and experiencing your own story”, about what makes a good story, about “having something at stake like a good spring in a mouse trap at the beginning of a story”, about what makes a good solo performance artist. “he or she is someone who can mine the pain and injury from the emotional wounds of life and turn them into theatrical gold. someone who can make art out of the fabric of their lives.” “…not just in a self-indulgent, therapeutic kind of way, but with a craft and with a perspective that makes the specificity of the individual story into something universal”.

i talk about the 3 greatest american playwrights, eugene o’neill, tennessee williams, and arthur miller. of “how they spun their autobiographical plays out of their own families’ tumultuous and painful histories”. of “how williams wrote about his southern-bred and overbearing mother and his crippled and too-delicate sister and turned them into amanda and laura wingfield in his poetic and tragic ‘glass menagerie’”. of “how o’neill wrote arguably the greatest american play, ‘long day’s journey into night’ about his drunk and miserly father, about his morphine-addicted mother, about his bitter and failed older brother, and about himself, a taciturn and tubercular teenager… and took them all into one of the darkest and longest nights of soul-wrenching theater an american audience had ever seen.” yet “he was so mortified about the power and truth of his own play that he refused to have it produced until after 25 years after his death.” i say, “making art out of the fabric of your lives is what playwrights and artists do. not that it’s easy, because the doors of avoidance, artifice and escape are always wide open… but for those who are chosen or driven to try, they must follow the path deep inside themselves, and like shamans of old, they must come out the other side… with their individual truths… with their own beauties… and offer them up… to the choir… to the audience… like the greeks did… like shakespeare did… like only they, themselves, must ultimately attempt to do.”

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i talk. and they listen. i’m surprised. i don’t have anything scripted. i haven’t planned anything. but the simple truth is that i’ve been doing this same thing for so many years, that i actually know and believe in what i’m talking about. i’ve seen the power of stories. i’ve seen them release their own authors from years of shame and secrecy. and i’ve seen these same stories make audiences stand on their feet with recognition and appreciation. i believe that we all have something in common as human beings. no matter which side of the border we live on. no matter what our religious or political persuasions are. we all have problematic families: mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. we have all tried to love, been loved or been rejected; we’ve all been loyal, betrayed, succeeded against great odds, been abandoned, ashamed, overcome impossible obstacles. these powerful stories are what make us human, different from the other species. not just the size of our brain and our intelligence. but our histories. our memories. the way we interact with each other, make choices, carry around our histories and memories in our present.

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i talk and they listen. for 2 weeks. i tell them about myself. about my unhappy adolescence. about my defying my family’s expectations by choosing to become an artist, instead of a doctor. i talk about my cancer in 1989. about my fear of death. and about my not being afraid of it any more. about living in the moment. about traveling without an itinerary. again, about the train of opportunity. “that life is about making choices and commitments.” i tell them about “meeting my wife in front of an ATM machine in bali, completely ‘by accident’ and inviting her to america and marrying her a year later, when she was 30 years younger than i was, spoke no english, and didn’t know who tim leary, ram dass, or even who richard nixon or george washington was.” i use my own life as example. i try to practice what i preach and to learn by practice what i still need to learn.

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every day after class, mihaela and i go out to lunch… at the one café. the second day, bibi, mother and improv actress, joins us. we are three. same delicious chorba, freshly baked bread, and strong romanian coffee. the third day, felix and alice-monica join us. we are five. another chorba, same bread and strong coffee. the next day… vlad, and patricia. we are growing. i’ve never had lunch with a single student in my 24 years at USC in los angeles. it’s not my thing. i like to keep boundaries. like a good professional: doctor, therapist, sports coach, you know what i mean. if the student sees you as too human, with problems and weaknesses of your own, they believe you less. they believe in you less. or that’s what i always thought. but now, out of need and convenience, i am breaking bread with my romanian students. sure, we talk a bit about class, but… we also talk about so many other things. about communism, ceaucescu, vampires, and family. about the 60s in america, about gypsies living on the sides of the road in moldavia, about courage and cowardice, about … life. it is totally surprising… and enjoyable. i am discovering that students are so much more than bodies, hearts, and minds sitting or moving around in a class room, wanting to learn. they are actually “people” too.

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and… it’s reciprocal. they’ve never had lunch with a teacher before. they’ve never had a teacher be so open and honest with them before. be so vulnerable, so… him…self. in fact, they say that most of their teachers are disappointing… only going through the motions, with all the power… with all the so-called “knowledge and expertise”, treating them like impotent, sponge-absorbing children. “how dare you think of telling your own story? who do you think you are? learn the classics. learn how to act!” i tell them, “look within. find out who you are. what do you have to say? where you want to go? have the courage to say it, to do it. your stories can be as powerful as anyone’s. who wants to see chekhov’s ‘3 sisters’ for the billionth time? we want to be surprised, delighted, moved, provoked in the theater, in ways that tv and movies can’t do to us. we want to discover ourselves in new, meaningful, and alive ways… right there in our seats… right there on the stage in front of us. in a community called ‘an audience’.” i talk. they listen. they write. we listen. we laugh. and occasionally, we cry. together. and almost every day, i realize that i do, indeed, have a mighty magnificent job.

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in the afternoon improv classes, it’s different, but parallel. the class grows every day. the word spreads. “trules knows what he’s doing. check it out!” i teach them about “not thinking”, about “living in the moment”, about “saying yes, making it their own, adding something new and passing it on”. the 3 steps of improv a la trules. i teach them about “gesture”, about “discovering the content of their movement”, so that it’s real and spontaneous. about “the importance listening and making their partners, their teammates, look good.” i tell them about “how little i like comedy sports, and improv teams and improv actors trying to be clever and funny” i tell them that “comedy in our class will come from the surprise of genuine, instinctive re-action. from doing the work and seeing what you discover along the way. not from planning things out and trying to get laughs.” “life”, i say, “is like one long improv. about having the courage and confidence to make choices and decisions… sometimes under a great deal of pressure. life never turns out the way you expect or want it to. as mr. lennon said, ‘life is what happens while you’re waiting for your plans to work out.’” i ask them, “when the train of opportunity comes along, can you trust yourself to step up, swing the bat…improvise and see where it takes you?” day after day, on and on, along the road of life.

harveric-small

in the middle of the 2^nd week, i screen my autobiographical documentary film, “the poet and the con”. the film about my identification and relationship with my criminal uncle that took me 7 long years to make and which i haven’t seen in maybe another 10 years. the film in which i show my parents and i struggling in a sunny california back yard over my arrest for commercial burglary, over my own virulent anti-semitism, over my own discomfort and hatred of myself. it’s not an easy film to share with an audience, especially one composed of students who have come to admire and respect me as a teacher and as an artist. but as the saying goes, i have to put up or shut up. take the risk i’m so flippant asking them to take. so… i lose a night’s sleep… and don’t actually watch the film with them… but i introduce it and come back into the screening room when it’s over to answer questions. i’m met by a sea of silence. no applause. silence. but i know from previous screenings at festivals around the world, that my film disturbs people. it’s not an easy one to come out of, or to start yammering away about. but then i see, the audience is moved. and after a moment, they do start asking me personal questions. “you look and sound so different now than when you made the film. do you feel different?” “what were you so angry about?” “how did your relationship with your parents survive that awful day of filming?” i try to give honest answers. i try to meet the challenge.

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two days later, i’m up in front of an audience again. this time, live. i call the event (tongue in cheek), “trules speaks”. as if i haven’t said enough over the 2 week residency. but it feels like i haven’t had an audience listen to me in years… as an artist… as a man with something to say. so… instead of just doing a rehearsed performance, like i’ve done so many times before, i decide to “just let myself be” in front of the audience. i want to carry on the dialogue i’ve been having for 2 weeks… but in front of an audience. i don’t want to isolate myself inside of memorization, performance, judgment, and need for approval; i just want to open up and let it rip!

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so i do. about an hour before the event, i show up in the theater with nicu, the gentle and self-effacing dean of the theater school. with his palette of theater brushes and his life spent in too many small theaters, nicu is the wizard of UNATC (the university’s acronym). he’s able to give me a live internet connection with a screen and projector, which we put stage right, next to a white plastic podium in the center of the stage. i see a bright yellow ladder sitting on the side of the room, and after we adjust some lights, i say, “let’s leave the ladder stage left.” so as the audience comes into the space now composed of these 3 simple set pieces, into a kind of blue soundscape of miles davis’ “so what”, i have the guests actually walk to the podium, center stage, and sign into the facebook page, “trules speaks”, as guests. they’re all a little surprised to be part of the performance, but it starts us out on tenuous, interesting ground. like “what’s going to happen next?”

next… i walk onto stage and climb the ladder with my back to the audience. the lights dim, the music fades, the audiences hushes, and i turn around and sit there on one of the rungs staring at them all. maybe 50 of them. great! just what i didn’t want. expectation. a “performance.” but what can i do? i open my mouth…. “when i grow up, i’m gonna be…. a puma whale.” silence. “i said, when i grow up i’m gonna be a puma whale.” more silence. “is this a poem? a performance? a reading? what the fuck is trules doing?” i plow through the first piece. silence. no applause. i climb down the ladder, walk center to the podium, and start the second. “see my face? it’s ugly. it’s rubbery. watch.” a few twitters, … discomfort. i finish: “just keep your face outta my face. alright? a few more twitters. silence. no applause.

this ain’t workin’, trules. do something else. i put on my glasses and look out at the crowd. at least they’re not walking out. or hurling romanian tomatoes. “ok…….. welcome…. to… ‘trules’ speaks’”. my mind races to find the right thing to say. “and… here i am… and there you are…” and from that moment on, for the next 2 hours, i improvise. i actually look at, and speak to, the audience. i ask them questions. “do you want to know the difference between new york and LA?” they answer enthusiastically, “yes!” i tell them: “in LA people say ‘have a nice day’, but actually are thinking ‘fuck you’, while in new york, people say ‘fuck you’ but are actually thinking ‘have a nice day.” they laugh. they start to loosen up. i start to loosen up. it starts to be a two way street, a dialogue, just like i’d hoped for. i ask some questions. they ask some questions. i read a few more pieces. they open up some more. i address them by name, the ones that i know from class, it seems like we have a friendship, a relationship. if they don’t respond, i remind them about the train of opportunity. “if not now…” “when?”they respond. i ask, “if i could do anything in the world for you tonight, what would it be?” i look at them. they look around uncomfortably and twitter again. “come one…!” a girl in the back who i don’t know says, “i want to meet johnny depp.” the audience laughs. i tell her how: “go to paris, look up his girl friend, vanessa paradis, and start stalking him.” the audience likes the idea. “but why waste your time on fucking celebrity? we’re all such bloodsucking sycophants, thinking if we get close to fame, something good might rub off. i promise you, it won’t….”

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and so it goes. and so it goes. more questions. more answers. trules speaks… for 90 minutes, until he finally asks, “have you had enough?” in unison, they sing out “noooooo.” “well then let’s take a little break, and when we come back, i’ll tell you some travel stories….”

and we do. and i do…. and at the end of two improvised, i hope, inspiring hours, where i actually die on stage in front of them… for about 60 seconds with my head glued to the podium… illustrating my point… that we could all die… any time… if not now… when? at the end of these 2 glorious, non-performance interactive hours, i say my heartfelt thank yous, my good nights and my good lucks, and i take a humble little bow. (i think, truly.) they applaud. and applaud. i stand there and take it in. they don’t stand up, but they continue to applaud. i think it’s the longest, not the loudest, but the warmest and longest…. applause i’ve ever received. i guess i must have done something right.

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on the next day, my last in bucharest, i teach my final two classes, solo performance & improvisation, and naturally, we go out for lunch in between. of course, to the one café. this time, we have to slide 6 tables together; there are more than 20 of us. mihaela is still there. she of the first day and of the first chorba and freshly baked bread. felix and bibi are there. and patricia and lucia and ana pasti and vlad and alice-monica and sorina … they have all joined us. even the good dean, nicu mandea, is there, shyly drinking his romanian beer and eating his romanian sausage. we are all one happy… and sad… family. my time here is through. i/we’ve built a field and we all “came together”, as mr. lennon would say again. we laughed and we learned. together. we sweated. together. we wrote and listened to each other. we “came together” and we celebrated our 2 countries, our 2 cultures… together… all on mr. fulbright’s tab. hey, there are SOME things to be grateful for about our big bad, imperialist, american empire!

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in the evening, the solo performers show up at “underground”, the typically eastern european underground night club/bar, to read their monologues, the culmination of our 2 weeks of work together. there are 12 of them, and they manage to fill the club with about 50 friends, sitting on stools, standing in front of the stage… to hear stories from the “fabric of our lives”. they read: a story of the awkwardness of english class for a young romanian girl, a story of a girl of 7 having sex with a 11 year old gypsy boy, a story of taking care of a mother with cancer, a story of a young gypsy girl coming to terms with years of abandonment and abuse. stories… out of these young romanian lives. and… the audience… listens. and is surprised. and… listens. and laughs. and listens some more. and is moved. and listens… and applauds…. and applauds… into the night.

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afterwards, we all mill about the dark, raunchy club with wines and beers, and we take lots of photos… and then felix takes out his guitar to play… but because the club now turns into a disco, we all pile out into the streets of downtown bucharest, ambling and laughing together… until we end up in front of the famous architecture school and the student protest fountain… where we park ourselves and sing communal romanian folk songs for the next two hours. actually, they sing and i listen…. and then at 2 in the morning… we all stand to do our final group hug and shed our tears and say our goodbyes… until i come back again… until i come back again………

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and then it’s morning and the next thing i know, i’m on a plane for istanbul…

but that, as they say… is another story…

for now though, trules has spoken. probably too long again… but hey, it’s been nice… to have been heard!

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thank you, mr. fulbright. thank you, mr. obama. thank you, bucharest and sinaia and moldavia and romania. thank you, my students. i’ve done my job… planted the seeds. it’s now up to you, to tend them and to take care of them. up to you, to watch them grow and to harvest their fruits and bounty.

there are many fields of dreams still out there. i know. notwithstanding many disappointments, heartbreaks, and failures…

not to worry. say yes. get on those trains of opportunity………

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they’re rolling along every day,

right, bob?

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Posted in "life is beautiful", "the poet and the con", "trules speaks", american culture, art, bobos, culture, eugene o'neill, fulbright, liviu cuilei, romania, solo performance, students, teaching, theater | 2 Comments »

on turning 60, or following the yellow brick road

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

i’m drivin’ hard along the I-70. just west of kansas city. pushing 90, eyes on the rear view, lookin’ for the fuzz. the radio’s tuned into K-MAX, blaring kelly clarkson, carrie underwood, and miley
cyrus, the young estrogen tri-fecta! my foot’s heavy on pedal, and i’m dreamin’ of “oklahoma joe’s”
which has the best pork ‘n beef ribs either side of the mississippi. “joe’s” is situated in the back of this
little mom ‘n pop gas station off the highway, and i’m headin’ there before my eyes droop closed and my head hits the wheel. it’s three in the morning and i’ve been doin’ some hard drivin’. my hair’s greased back, and i’m thinkin’ roy orbison, tom petty, and kansas city here i come. KC, home of charlie “yardbird” parker, count basie, and wilbur harrison, jazz music floatin’ in the air 24/7 along 18^thand vine, back in the day. back in the day….

nah, never mind.

none of that shit is true. i’m in kansas alright, but the I-70
is taking me to lawrence, the quite civilized college town, home of
the mighty jayhawks, where my friend, moose, a tenured university
professor in geography, will be celebrating his 60^th
birthday on tuesday, three days hence. moose hasn’t shaved his
karl marx-like beard in three decades, and his brilliant, well chosen
ideas about ecology, farming, and home schooling haven’t
changed a lick in that amount of time either. i’ve flown in
from LA, where i’ve been living my middle age, going on 25
years now. ricky, skeeter, and chico have flown in too, from new
yawk, bethesda, and yuma, arizona, and they too, actually we four,
have already hit the big six oh. moose will be last, but we all grew
up together in the new yawk-long island suboibs of levittown back in
the day. you know the day: the post war, idyllic baby boom decade of
eisenhower and his buttoned down 50s. we sang in the “times
they are a changin’” 60s, along with bobby, joanie,
vietnam, the kennedies, pol pot, watergate, we shall overcome, sex,
drugs, and rock ‘n roll. of course, some of us sang, sexed, and
drugged differently, but that’s the interesting part….

i have a thing for kansas. it has to do with red ruby slippers, a new heart, a new
brain, and courage. you know, oz? as in, “wizard of”? how
many times did we all watch it? back in the day? i must have seen it
seven easters in a row, all in black in white: judy in black and
white, toto and auntie em in black and white, ray bolger, jack haley,
and bert lahr, all in black and white. glinda, the good witch, frank
morgan as the blowhard wizard, the munchkins, the wicked witch, and
the yellow brick road. i’ve been trying to follow it ever
since. that road. but where is it? what is it? following the yellow
brick road? what’s it mean? what’s the metaphor?
following your heart, your dream, your bliss? or walking down the
road of your parental units’ expectations? becoming their “son,
the doctah?” or becoming your own man? breaking or following
tradition? making money? becoming a “success”? in whose
terms? the world’s? your own? putting your mark on the planet
or retreating into your own private idaho, i mean, kansas? yeah, i’m
turning 60, i’m in kansas, and it’s time to evaluate,
reconnoiter, look into that all too harrowing mirror of life…

there’s three things i’ve been holding on to these last many years. when i
was young, i didn’t hold on, i looked ahead. i was led by my
ambition. i strived, i produced, i was driven. i took on the entire
world, sword and shield in hand, and i fought. i fought and i
thought… that i was invincible. i didn’t marry, didn’t
need permanence, i was foot loose and fancy free. i was an “artist”.
but now i think that maybe i was wrong. because i didn’t always
win. i fell down. i got hurt. i lost. after forty years, i got tired
of fighting. ricky, chico, and moose used to call me the “man
who never compromised”. and perhaps i was. chico always
preached “life’s a trade off, man”, but i didn’t
agree. i thought if you kept striving, kept your integrity, and never
gave up, that’s all there was to it. but now i think
differently. you see, the three things i’ve been holding onto
are home, job, and marriage. the big 3. security cards. three things
i never strove for, never wanted, didn’t believe in. why?
because it wasn’t the way; it wasn’t “be here now”,
live in the moment, like a rolling stone. it wasn’t free love,
trust the universe, fuck the man. were we wrong? we baby boomers? our
hippie, then yuppie, now bobo (bourgeois bohemian) generation? is
george will, the right wing columnist, right? were we self-indulgent,
narcissistic failures? were our blue jeans, long hair, and change the
world ideas just another youthful fad? do our kids, our mortgages,
our millions, our illusions, our illnesses, our 401ks make us just
another notch on the gun belt of life?

but see, my big 3 securities, home, job, and marriage, are far from it. secure. take a
look. my home. i don’t own one. never have. never wanted to.
i’ve always rented. seventy five bucks a month for my first one
bedroom in chicago when i was twenty two. a hundred and twenty five a
month for a three bedroom on halsted after that. then i house sat,
living on a hundred bucks a week for seven years while i danced.
moved back to new yawk, into the hotel woodward on 55^th
and broadway, seventy-five bucks a week. scalped broadway tickets to
pay the rent. moved into a beautiful, hand-built loft on 23^rd
and park, before guliani gentrified manhattan. sublet it illegally,
lost it in court. then LA, rent-controlled santa monica for ten
years, and now “lucretia gardens” in quickly becoming
gentrified echo park. i sublet the downstairs and the guest bedroom
to afford the pricey rent with one of the best views in the old
hollywood hills. but security? hah! the landlady can give me 60 days
notice any time she feels like it. it’s a free-standing, 3
bedroom private house. it’s not governed by rent control. the
lovely landlady, who i’ve had a decent relationship with for
over 14 years, can kick me out any time she gets the inkling to sell.
in fact, she gave me the 60 days notice a year ago, and i had to beg
to pay her $400 a month more just to stay. which is where i am at the
moment. but notice, i say “moment”…

job? i’ve been at one job for the last 22 years. at a prestigious private university
in southern california. for 17 years, i was an “adjunct”
faculty member. my contract was good for 6 months at a time. i never
knew whether or not it would be renewed, if i’d have a job the
next semester. fortunately, my students liked me, and my various
deans kept me on. i saw most of my fellow adjuncts go the way of the
world; new deans like to get rid of as much dead wood as they can,
hire their own men and women. five years ago, my third dean made me
full time. still no tenure, still no security. two years ago, i was
up for promotion. if i wasn’t promoted, i’d have no job
at all. fortunately again, my colleagues approved my promotion. i
like my job. i help form ideas in the minds of the young. i plant
seeds and watch them grow. i work only 8 months out of the year, and
my job and my art have allowed me to travel all over the globe. but
security? hah! i can still be let go on a year’s notice. if i’m
lucky, i’ll retire in 6 years. move to bali or the philippines.
open a little bed and breakfast. try to stretch my sad little 401k as
far as the oriental world will allow it. i’ll start all over
again. chicago. new york. LA. the great asiatic void. no guarantee.
no looking glass. no ruby slippers. no home. like a rolling stone…

then there’s the last of the big three, marriage. i married for the first time at
54 years old, to a young indonesian girl, less than half my age. she
didn’t speak much english and we shared few cultural references
between us. bob dylan? richard nixon? who’re they? george
washington, abe linclon, the same. we’ve been together for
seven years now, married for five, and what a long, strange road it’s
been. full of challenges that other marriages, which are, a priori,
full of challenges, never had to face. immigration. ESL classes. home
sickness. seven written tests to pass the DMV’s driver’s
test. language, language, language. age. age. age. culture. culture.
culture. wedding rings have gone flying across the room. plates and
paintings too. i don’t think many men in my position, in an
equivalent relationship, in my marriage, would have stayed. but i was
finally ready. and fully committed. i loved this girl and i wanted to
make the marriage work. she tested me in every way. she was a
twenty-five year old woman going on 16. she wanted money. things. she
wanted freedom; she learned what independence was here in america.
often at my expense. i considered separation and divorce many times
over the first five years. my friends and family told me to quit, to
get out before the damage broke me altogether. but i persisted. i
stayed. i earned this young woman’s trust. this june, we’ll
be celebrating her 30^th birthday. we’ll have a truly
international group of friends joining us in our 60-day-notice house
on the hill, and we’ll be happy together. but security? hah! as
much as i’ve invested in my marriage, as much as i’ve
already gotten out of it, deep in my hippie-artist heart, i truly
know that it could dissolve, break, disappear, like quick silver, at
any given moment. sure, in kansas, marriage is supposed to be
permanent, enduring, “forever”, but looking at LA’s
unglamorous reality, and the national statistics on divorce, i know
that… things change. and that no matter how “secure”
one tries to make oneself, sometimes, life simply has other plans….

i look at ricky, skeeter, chico, and moose, all fine fellows each, collectively as
well. three have been married twice, and twice divorced. the moose
has been married just once and both his kids are out of the house,
one a resident at KU medical center, the other a first year med
student at KU’s med school. they’re both fine young
people. we went out to dim sum and oklahoma joe’s with them
both. what can it be, that three fine fellows are thrice divorced,
while just one, the moose, is still seemingly happily married and the
proud father of two medically inclined children? could it be the
water in kansas? the grain? dorothy’s “there’s no
place like home”?

touchy-feely kinds of question, me thinks. but i like the last of the three answers:
dorothy’s “there’s no place like home”. i mean, the moose married earliest of us all; he was the one who retreated fastest from the world, to the myopia and safety of kansas.
he got a tenured college job, had kids early, bought a farm,
capitalized in real estate, and made, seemingly again, “all the
right moves”. while each of the other three had unhappy or
unsuccessful marriages and chose to move on in their lives. the moose
knew what he wanted and sealed his options tight. he built his world
up, and inward, to insulate himself and his family against the
hostilities and vagaries of life. ricky and chico were lawyers,
working for the man most of their lives. skeeter sold software to the
marketplace and became rich. he too, was dependent on external
buyers. only the moose (and myself) constructed the “world
according to me”. we retreated into our own private idahos, or
in moose’s case, kansas, and we basically marched to the beat
our own drummers. we’re the most set in our ways, me as an
“artist”, he as an “academic”, and we’re
the most opinionated and stubborn of “da boys”….

life? what does she think of all this humanistic mumbo jumbo? well, only life herself
knows, but me thinks she’s smiling at us all, knowing that no
choice is ultimately “better” than another. that each
human being makes his own choices, based on a personal alchemy of
history, genetics, practicality, and emotional need. according to ike
eisenhower and the buttoned down 50s, the moose has done “the
right thing”: held down a single job, created a monogamous
marriage, built a nest egg, and raised two winning kids. but from my
point of view, he’s a long way from oz. i wouldn’t trade
lives with him for all the corn in kansas. nor do i think, would
skeeter, ricky, or chico. moose simply doesn’t take any
chances. he’s adverse to risk, to experimentation. he likes to
plan ahead and to create a future he can count on. he knows what he
thinks, limits his intake, including the meatless diet he never
varies from, and he likes to keep things under control. ricky’s
had one job his whole life and two failed marriages, but late into
middle age, he’s first making discoveries about who he is and
what he likes: jazz, classical music, zen buddhism, and asian women.
chico is an accident happening. he knocks things down, drops and
breaks things, has done it his whole life; but you never know what’s
going to happen wid da chico man. he’s a barrel of laughs and a
pain in the ass, but he’s still alive. and skeeter, well, he’s
already retired; he can do whatever the hell he pleases. he followed
his mathematical bliss and cashed in; now he’s ready to marry
for a third time and start off on a new mentoring career. his life
and his smile are open roads….

me? i’ve settled into the comfort of routine and middle age. but… along
with my three permanent in-securities, home, job, marriage –
there’s also the very first of life’s insecure touchstones, good health. you see, i had cancer in ’89 and i
could have cashed in all my chips, but for the lucky diagnosis of
hodgkin’s disease, which was one of the most treatable and
curable of all cancers. but what i learned very quickly from my run
in with a life-threatening illness, is that it’s a good
spiritual and practical approach to appreciate every day that you’re
alive, and to concentrate on all that you do have, as opposed
to all the things you still want or don’t have.
and with my upcoming hip replacement… i’ve come to
accept the fact that life could turn me upside down at any
unpredictable moment. and that ultimately, life’s opportunities
and surprises, and the reactions and choices i’ve made to them,
have kept teaching me and showing me that there is, in truth, no
security in life. that nothing is stable, nothing is permanent,
nothing is reliable or forever. yet somehow, i’ve come to
accept this proposition and live my life according to it. i mean,
look, i teach “improvisation” for a living. what does
that mean? it makes me learn spontaneity and impermanence anew every
day i teach. they say that one teaches what one has to learn. it’s
true. like when i travel, i don’t make an itinerary; i just go.
each day, i follow my nose, my instinct, and trust at the end of the
day, i’ll have a place to stay and enough money to pay for it.
sure, i spend a lot of travel time making decisions: where to go,
when to go, where to stay, what to see, but it’s my favorite
way to travel. in fact, it’s the only way. the way i live….

so on the night before the moose’s actual birthday, da boys all settle down in
front of the new kansas flat screen to watch one of our collective
favorites, “cool hand luke”. ricky and chico have most of
the lines down to the exact inflection of the southern prison drawl:
“shaking it here, boss”, “spendin’ the night
in the box here, boss”, and “what we have here is a
failure to communicate”. the latter makes us all howl, as
warden strother martin beats the indomitably non-conformist luke to
the ground with his impotent club of frustration. we all love luke,
the christ-like hero of the film, as played by the young and
steel-eyed paul newman. unfortunately, we’ve all forgotten how
grim the movie becomes, as luke is hunted down time and again after
each failed prison break. personally, i’m devastated by the
film and luke’s stubborn demise. when he bitterly admits to
dragline just before he’s gunned down by “the man with no
eyes”, that “i never planned a damn thing in my whole
life”, i can’t help but identify with him. luke and me.
consummate anti-heroes. ultimate outsiders. rebels without a cause.
yeah, that’s me, boss, never planned a thing that worked out in
my whole life. just grabbed that ring of opportunity and held on for
dear life….

so now i’m back in sunny california. i heard the missouri river over-flowed from
torrential rains just after we left kansas, and president dubya has
declared most of the midwest a national disaster area. good thing da
boys got out in time. all but one of us, that is. the moose is still
there, probably ‘til the end of his days. me, i’m still
makin’ plans. in six years, i’ll have been at the
prestigious university long enough. i’ll face my fears, look
myself in the mirror again, and kick myself out of my little house
and home. well, not really mine. hell, the native americans say none
of us really “own” anything anyway. yeah, i’ll kick
myself west. far west. so far west that it’ll be east. far
east. bali or the philippines. in fact, i’m taking reservations
now. if you want to spend a little time at my far out, far east,
villa manila, then just drop me a line. it’ll be like an
informal time share. you come visit ‘n stay with me on my 70^th.
or 80^th. if i’m still kickin’, that is….

but right now, i’m drivin’ south on california’s I-5, from san francisco to
LA. i just put my dad in an assisted living community. he’s
crawlin’ towards the end of the line, and he needs a little
“assistance”, if you know what i mean. it’s not
easy to do, but who said life was easy. she certainly didn’t. i
got the radio up loud, and i’m tearing down the highway. not
highway 61, a la bob dylan, circa 1965. no, it’s hard to catch
ol’ bob on the interchangeable bakersfield-merced-modesto-san
joaquin fm radio stations these days. instead it’s john mayer,
amy winehouse, and kanye west. three of my favorites. not to mention
jack johnson, death cab for cutie, groove armada, rx bandits, the
shins, or the big bad voodoo daddies….

but look, the hills are covered with a spring carpet of yellow mustard seed. the entire
countryside is in bloom from the recent late winter-early spring
rain. even the barren I-5 is singing. “the hills are alive”…
with wild green grasses topped with feathery coxcombs. with pink,
flowering fruit trees, oranges, lemons, peaches, budding with new
life. the cow shit still stinks around mid-drive, coalinga, but it’s
a beautiful day for the ride home. home? home is where the road takes
you. home is where the road goes. just follow that yellow brick road,
right dorothy? or in this case, just follow the wild yellow mustard
seed………

is it rollin’, boys????

Posted in KU, ageing, american culture, barbecue, bobos, carrie underwood, cool hand luke, culture, friendship, glind the good witch, kansas, miley cyrus, movies, wizard of oz, yellow brick road | No Comments »

a curmudgeon’s appreciation of the walt disney concert hall, with dog

Friday, January 4th, 2008

paris’ cathedral de notre dame. the leaning tower of pisa. new yawk’s empire state building. shanghai’s jin mao tower. the roman coliseum. java’s borobudur buddhist temple complex. beijing’s 2008 bird’s nest olympic stadium. what’s your favorite man made architectural achievement? and how do you choose? how can you compare ancient temples to modern skyscrapers? places of worship to places of commerce? antiquity to modernity?

simple answer: you can’t. yet… people do. they always want to know: “what’s your favorite?” your favorite restaurant, city, country, beach, food, mountain range, camp site… building. the list goes on. me? i don’t like favorites. i like to appreciate each thing or place for what it is. just like “comparison is the death of creativity”, i think, too, comparison of excellence or pleasure is a fool’s artifice and activity. it’s not real, nor does it matter. although, of course, it does make for good conversation.

still, i love the walt disney concert hall. right here in good ol’ wildfiring, earthquaking, mudsliding, and rioting LA. why? why single it out from all the other great buildings in the world? well, maybe it’s because i saw it grow out of the earth, from a giant hole in the ground on first and grand, into the most dazzling and inspiring piece of architecture within a five minute drive from my own front door. yeah, i think that’s it. it’s personal. the disney concert hall is my personal favorite. and that’s what people really mean when they say “it’s my favorite. it’s the best. how can you even mention your favorite in the same breath with mine, asshole?” no, what they really mean to say is “it brings me pleasure. it appeals to my sense of beauty, size, imagination, engineering, religiosity, scope, detail, style, my sense of ‘je ne sais quoix’?”

but wait a minute. something’s amiss here. before i go on about my passion and appreciation for the walt disney concert hall, let me just say straight out, i absolutely hate and despise the “disneyfication” of the planet. or for that matter, the mcdonald’s, coca cola, pizza hut, kentucky fried, or microsoftization of the planet. i simply don’t like branding and monopoly. i don’t like corporate conglomerates eating up and replacing mom and pop stores and one of a kind businesses. i don’t like homogenized cookie cutter neighborhoods spreading out like pernicious suburban blights across our modern american landscape, all with the same office depots, radio shacks, and other convenient uni-stores, avariciously designed to proliferate and spread our corporate american culture. and – i don’t like greedy corporate stock holders peddling the image of a happy-go-lucky cartoon mouse and his perfect snow white-little mermaid cousins and brethren, all for the bottom line of longer lines in anaheim and greater sales and profits in disney lands and disney stores all around the globe.

nevertheless, why don’t you come along with me? let’s start on the northeast corner of first and hope. right across the street from the back end of the music center’s dorothy chandler pavilion, where mr. gehry has put a granite stairway that seems to offer 24 hour access to the concert hall’s tranquil rear gardens and urban park designed by melinda taylor and lawrence reed moline. let’s go just a short while after one of the concerts have let out, say a mcoy tyner or barbara cook concert, as clay and i like to do, when you get the full effect of the moody and tactile night lighting design.

this is obviously the day-time view, but you can imagine the dark desert los angeles sky, with its smattering of stars twinkling amongst the skyscrapers, as we climb the steps at the lower right. this is an offbeat approach because the steel façade is not quite as elegant as it is around the front side at the southern, grand avenue entrance. you can see sort of a steel “pot belly” stove to the center left of the stairway, behind which can be seen the actual “guts” of the structure. but we won’t see that until later, because we’re proceeding straight ahead from the top of the stairway into the gardens.

let’s walk straight ahead here, past the pot belly steel stove on the left, along the verdant and shadowed, white concrete path. towards the garden’s signature centerpiece, “a rose for lilly”, a hand-sculpted fountain in the form of a giant rose, designed by mr. gehry in honor of lillian disney, whose favorite flower was the rose, as a gift from her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. the fountain was inspired by mrs. disney’s extensive delft china collection, the outstretched rose petals covered in an intricate mosaic, composed of some 8,000 broken pieces of blue and white royal delft china, specially imported from holland for this project.

honestly, clay and i are not big fans of the delft rose fountain. clay thinks it’s kind of chintzy, and i agree, sort of pretty in a naive way, but soulless, much like many of the disney cartoons and products of uncle walt and his progeny. but there are several benches, just to the west of the fountain, where i like to sit and meditate under the stars amongst the six international species of flowering trees, each with a differently coordinated blooming schedule: the hong kong orchid tree’s fuchsia flowers revealing their delicate selves in fall, madagascar’s snowball tree’s pink flowers in winter, mexico’s naked coral tree’s red petals in spring, china’s pistache yellow, orange and red leaves in fall, brazil’s tipu tree ocher flowers in late spring and summer, and latin america’s pink trumpet tree, naturally bearing her pink trumpet flowers in early spring. clay likes to nestle into the shrubbery of the hundred different expensive and exotic species, in between the benches and the rose fountain, and i’m amazed at how calm he appears, off leash, as he soaks up the ambience and no doubt meditates in dogese.

after say, half an hour of nighttime communion with the sky above and the garden below, clay and i proceed to the south westerly corner of the garden’s exterior and make a hard left turn, where we can choose between the easterly view out onto city hall from the top of the south grand avenue stairways, or the much more inviting maze of concrete and steel architecture that mr. gehry has fashioned into two fanciful mini amphitheatres. we prefer to wait to get up a little higher in the outdoor stairwells for our city views, so i usually entertain clay with a monologue or soliloquy or two, which he patiently endures before he is rewarded with the steep, swirling ascending staircases which he so enjoys.

“to be or not to be, that is the question, my dear canine soul mate. whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to be touring the exterior aesthetic intricacies of mr. gehry’s convoluted masterpiece by night, for free, or whether ‘twould be worth the exorbitant and emasculating eighty five buckeroos to soak up the inspiring sounds of the LA philharmonic, perchance within the inner chamber of los angeles musical sanctity and pretension?”

clay barks politely, either when i’m done or he’s bored, and we proceed upward, onto the steep triangular section of steps in the southeast corner of the building’s exterior. the steps don’t lead anywhere, except to a spectacular view of downtown LA, looking east over pristinely white-lit city hall, along the long corridor that will soon become the trendy grand avenue project, an intended champs elysee of the west, and beyond, into the bowels of the city’s old factory district, now still an odd mix of quickly gentrifying lofts and still dangerous squatters’ quarters along san julian and main streets. clay likes the sight of this juxtaposition between the extreme poverty and wealth of the city, and he knows he’s one lucky and sophisticated dog to be given such an opportunity.

we gingerly descend the steps and proceed northerly amidst a narrow corridor of steel which now completely obscures the easterly view, but which gives us both this unique feeling of making our way along the inside of a gorgeous sardine can. clay likes the maze-like feel of the tour at this point, where the building’s walls tower and swirl around us, and i particularly like the ability mr. gehry has given us to actually touch the steel with our paws, so to speak. the steel, which looks so sleek and shiny from a distance, is here much more granular and unpolished on the inside of the construction. making our way alone through the maze here, with its dark and abandoned curves, gives us the feeling of being thieves in the night. we like it.

now we’re climbing higher up another curving stairway, along the east side of the building. what with not being able to see any of the city beyond, and with not another human being or guard in sight, we get a distinct feeling of… trespassing. we like that too. its’ dark and mysterious, and definitely not on the city tour. intrepid clay scampers up the stairway, far ahead of me, still happily off leash, like he’s in his own personal urban park, as i take my time, huffing and puffing my way up to the high point of the building’s stairways. i take a breather as clay comes back to get me: “what’s taking you so long, old man? let’s boogie.” i smile, take a deep breath, and proceed, now along the distinctly northerly part of the exterior tour.

it’s my favorite part, because as the narrow stairways descend, gehry leads us into the center and bowels of the great concert hall. here you can simultaneously look down into the rich redwood interior lobby through the exterior glass windows at the back of “pot belly stove”, and up into the decidedly unfinished nuts and bolts of the structure, inches away from its massively welded girders and support structure. if clay could speak, i know he’d be joining me and asking: “how the hell did they do this, man?” i mean, not only are the curving and swirling surfaces of the building giving us a completely different and spectacular view every few steps, but it’s so viscerally and amazingly thrilling to see how the building was so mightily forged and constructed. a building paul bunyan or zeus, himself, would undoubtedly embrace.

it’s a shame, but our tour is almost over for the night. a little like coming down after orgasmic sex (not with each other), clay and i descend the post bowel, northern stairway, around the back of the stout and giggly “pot belly stove”, until we arrive back, full square, at the top of the northeast corner stairway at first and hope. clay’s ready to do the whole thing again, but me, i’m apparently good only for one two hour tour a night. so with much dog regret, we descend the hope stairway, down to first street, back to our car, back to… reality.

i hope you’ve enjoyed the tour with us. you’ll have to come back for the interior tour another time, when you can afford to fork up the eighty five bucks for a concert of your choice, and i can accompany you, dogless, of course. but hey, you got the complete exterior “disney” tour. the gehry version, that is, as opposed to the always-crowded orlando or anaheim ones. i do have to admit, as curmudgeonly as i may be, it does seem that the great and grand children of the rumored anti-semite king of animation and moguldom, have indeed done something beautiful and awe-inspiring in their “uncle” walt’s name. or perhaps it was mr. broad, mr. gehry, and the corporate and fundraising city board members and powerbrokers who did it for them. but as i said at the outset, my dog and i are two grateful “customers” — although we don’t pay one red cent for our tour — or our appreciation. and although uncle walt may not like it that way, we both agree, that’s exactly the way it should be.

so — a begrudging but genuine thanks, uncle walt. and “ruff, ruff”!!!

Posted in LA architecture, american culture, architecture, clay the dog, culture, fountain hopping, hip, los angeles, walt disney, walt disney concert hall | No Comments »

cowboys and samurai, exploding the myth

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

i usedta be a cowboy. when i was 5 years old, i had a gray and white flannel western shirt, blue jeans, and baby brown cowboy boots. my eyes were pure blue, clear, and innocent, and i tried to be a good boy and to do everything my parents wanted. i watched all the cowboy shows on tv in the 50s and 60s. i was a fan of roy rogers, lash larue, the cisco kid, hopalong cassidy, the rifleman, brett maverick, the lone ranger, davey crockett, andy devine, and richard boone as a bounty hunter in “have gun will travel”. not so much gene autry, and my mom didn’t let me stay up for “gunsmoke”. as i got older, i saw shane, high noon, the man who shot liberty valance, red river, shootout at the ok corral, cat ballou, bad day at black rock, the gunfighter, and how the west was won.

a suburban new yawk intellectual jewish kid from longisland, i was taken in by the american west and the myth of the trailblazing, pioneering cowboy. he was always in the right. he fought bad guys, savage indians, drunks, outlaws, and interlopers of all kinds. he was the chin-jutting sherriff, the ice-in-the-veins marshall, the fearless but persecuted homesteader, the immaculate justice-toting gunslinger. he was wild bill hickok, wyatt earp, buffalo bill cody, doc holliiday, billy the kid, jesse james. even when he was bad, he was good. i had all kinds of toy six-shooters, a cowboy mural on my yellow pastel bedroom wall with a hand-painted corral and a bucking bonc, and i had the complete, 80 card, 2 set editions of davey crocket cards. i still do, somewhere in one of my old camp trunks.

so it was not until long after my loss of innocence, my identification with my criminal and outlaw uncle, and the tv cowboy shows having sadly faded into the fickle memories of us eisenhower kids and our ravenous tv program execs, that i came to realize the de-constructionist truth. that the spanish and european conquistadors, columbus, cortez, pizarro, the high and mighty “fathers” of our hemisphere, almost on equal par with my beloved cowboys, had virtually raped the land, annihilated the native people, and destroyed the culture to establish omnipotent colonial power in the americas. that they had enslaved and corralled the indigenous people, eradicated a majority of them with european disease, and brainwashed them with stubborn chrisitanity.

that this culture of power, righteousness, and dominance simply spread to the holy american west came as a surprise to me as i passed adolescence and slowly outgrew my infatuation with my heroic and sacred cowboys. how could it be that never in miss bandiero’s 11th grade american history class, which i loved so dearly, did we learn that the frontier american government cruelly and disingenuously repeated the same humiliating scenario with the native american indian population, breaking treaty after treaty, and wiping out the majoriity of the native population with disease, encarceration, and military superiority. sure, tonto was the lone ranger’s safe and wise indian tv sidekick, but cochise, crazy horse, sitting bull… these were all real indian chiefs… who fiercely fought and opposed american domination and genocide before their hearts were so brutally buried at wounded knee, south dakota. and my main man, fess parker, who played tv’s davey crockett, and wyatt, and jesse, and the bills, these were some tough and bitter hombres who, along with upholding the law, also no doubtedly broke it repeatedly, killing good guys, bad guys, indians, outlaws, and who knows who else in the not always justice-keeping and teflon history of the west.

then i went away to college. buffalo, new york. (an unconscious homage to the bills?) and there i met professor norman holland. and his language and aesthetics of film. i fell in love anew. with the samurai. of course with toshiro mifune in “yojimbo” and “sanjuro”, and with all of kurosawa’s “seven samurai”, but also with inagaki’s “samurai trilogy”, and the blind but prolific swordsman, zatoichi. the samurai was a more sophisticated symbol for me to identify with and to romanticize. he was a loner. he was disciplined, both ascetic and aesthetic. a warrior. never would a woman interfere with his quest. his job. his higher principles. he was a trained and ritualistic fighter. a swordsman. not just some hotheaded cowboy with a gun. sure, he was a paid mercenary, but he did have some discretion as to who he would defend, who he would accept money from. i wanted to be a spiritual and life-long warrior. i wanted to be a samurai.

so i went through my young adult years as a samurai. well, not exactly. but as an artist. first, as a modern dancer. i trained every day. i was disciplined. i had artistic, ascetic, and aethetic principles. i lived for my art. not money. i sacrificed. i didn’t get tied down to women. i was free. free to move on when and where i wanted to. i tried to be strong. honest. principled. then i became a clown. a professional one. samurai, you ask? well, yes. i was still disciplined. i trained at and taught what i did. i lived on 100 dollars a week, if i was lucky. i made people laugh, sacrificing my own nobility and pride. look at mifune in early kurosawa samurai movies. yojimbo. sanjuro. he was a fool. he flopped, fought, raged, and drank. a samurai clown if ever there was one.

then i became an actor. a solo performer. dependent on myself. my own words. i put myself out in the universe and demanded to be heard. to be seen. i failed many times. i succeeded many others. it was a constant challenge. a constant battle, being an artist. so little support or encouragement from my culture. from my government. a constant financial struggle. but i was on the path. some western samurai-warrior path of being an artist. demanding the most of oneself. never compromising. a purist. a clown. an outsider. a dying breed.

my youth passed. dancer, clown, solo perfomrer, teacher….. i was in my 40s. living in LA. in 1969, i had gotten myself arrested in deadwood, south dakota, long before mr. milch and HBO discovered it – for wreckless driving. i spent time in wild bill hickok’s jail, and i was chained to the mountain-sized indian, neck. i was released on bond and never returned for trial. perhaps i’m still wanted in them thar black hills of south dakota.

anyway, in 1992, clint eastwood made the movie “the unforgiven”. it was dark and ornery, and there was something specifically about it that quickly put it atop my all time list of cowboy movies. what was it, you ask? it was – the killing. specifically, how hard eastwood made the killing. no longer were cowboys just firing bullets into the bodies of their enemies; no longer was a single quick-on-the-draw gunslinger just firing and wiping out whole crews or families of james-es, billies, or willies. no. because here was legendary gunfighter, william munny, taking on one last job. for the money. not for the glory. not for revenge. not for truth, justice, or the american way. just for survival. a cowboy who’d lost his wife, who was no good at farming, and in fact no good at anything but killing. and now, an old man, he’s not even up for that. yet here he is, riding off to the town of big whiskey to kill one more time. finally, the movie has munny do it, kill, not heroically, but painfully, and in the process, eastwood forever blurs the lines between heroism and villainy, between man and myth. squeezing the trigger of a gun, staring a man in the face whose life you’re going to take, would never again for me be an act to celebrate.

and then there’s the great gangster movies, and in our time, the godfather trilogy and 8 years of the sopranos. i mean, here’s vito corleone and tony soprano, mafia dons both, following the infamous trails of al capone, bugsy siegel, and all rest of the fictional and real cold blooded killer-inheritors of the american west. killing for family. for honor. for greed. killing for power, sex, money; killing for killing sake. and here we are, the adoring and mesmerized public, waiting with each baited scorsese breath for the next gang land execution. the next garroting. the next bullet riddling. the next brutality. all in the name of entertainment.

and now i’m 59. 60 next month. life’s been moving along. my hip’s bad. i’m still teaching and i’m going to china next month on another adventure. last night i rented “harakiri” on netflix, and all over again, i’m put in touch with the power, the restraint, the beauty of japanese samurai culture. it’s 1630. beginning of the centuries-long institution of samurai. of seppuku. it’s the story of 2 down-on-their-luck feudal samurai who have lost their job fighting for their sponsors. it’s a time of peace, and once again, these trained mercenaries can’t farm or live without the sword. they suffer in poverty. and they come to the ruling clan of samurai with a favor to ask. can they commit harakiri (”seppuku”, the painful bowel dismemberment ritual) in the ruling samurai’s courtyard? thinking first the son-in-law, then father-in-law, are not serious about their requests, but only trying to be sent off with some money in their pockets, the ruling samurai force the 2 men to commit harakiri. the younger man doesn’t even have a steel blade; he is forced to do so with a bamboo sword, with which he naturally does a messy and painful job.

enter the father-in-law. played by the fierce-eyed nakadai tatsuya. he is told the brutal story of his son-in-law’s harakiri and asked if he still wants to go through with his own. without acknowledging his relationship with his son-in-law, he agrees to it. but not before telling his story. an amazing one – in which he first tells of his son-in-law’s heroic sacrifice of selling his samurai sword for a bamboo one in trying to save the life of his wife who is in a difficult labor without doctor or medicine. that is why he shows up to commit harakiri with a bamboo sword. but the proud and stubborn samurai clan don’t want to hear any whys. they only want to carry out the harakiri and not be taken for easy touches.

next, after throwing down 3 small wrapped packages on the seppuku mat, the father-in-law tells of how he tracked down 3 members of the ruling samurai clan, the 3 who witnessed his son-in-law’s brutal self execution. he tells of his individual encounters with each, as he subjugates each in battle and rather than kill his opponent, he instead humiliates each man by cutting off the “top knot” from his head, thereby allowing his hair to fall down “like a woman”. the samurai clan leader, who has been patient enough to hear the father-in-law’s long story, is outraged that 3 of his men not only have been beaten by a “starving country ronin”, but that they have lied about their lack of appearance at the ritual. he orders the father-in-law to be chopped down. but the father-in-law kills 4 samurai with great courage in a final battle with the entire clan, and he has to be shot down before he is conquered and vanquished. in the end, the samurai leader lies and makes sure that none of the heart-breaking truth is recorded for posterity. for it is far better to lie, thereby keeping one’s dignity and reputation, than to have empathy for a opposing samurai or to record the truth.

to my surprise, “harakiri” quickly replaced all the other samurai movies i had ever seen as my favorite. because of its power. its discomfort. it was, in fact, an “anti-samurai” movie. much like “the unforgiven”, “harakiri” was an anti-violence movie. it uncovered the truth underneath the all-powerful, unblinking samurai myth, and showed it to be a sham. just as hopalong cassidy and the lone ranger were ultimately made-for-tv kiddy entertainments, and most probably wild bill hickok, wyatt earp, and bat masterson were far from being the ideal heroes of cowboy lore, and just as vito corleone and tony soprano were finally only brutal thugs with colorful families and photogenic, senisitve sides, so were these impeccable samurai finally and merely human, vain, and ignoble.

it’s nice to walk around inside the memories of childhood. i have a synthetic, racoon-tailed davey crockett hat signed by fess parker, the disney actor, that i got on a trip to his medocino self-named winery. one day, maybe i’ll dig into my old black camp trunk to find my perfect, 2-set, 80 card davey crockett collection. in my mind, i can always go back to that yellow-painted, bucking bronc mural in the old westbury of my youth. maybe even one day, i’ll drive back through the sacred black hills of south dakota to see if there’s actually still a warrant for my arrest in 1969. but after watching and re-watching “the unforgiven” and “harakiri”, never again will i want to be a cowboy or a samurai. it’s hard enough being myself.

Posted in "harakiri", "the unforgiven", american culture, brett maverick, clint eastwood, cowboys, davey crockett, japanese culture, lash larue, movies, samurai, scorsese, the lone ranger, the sopranos, wyatt earp | No Comments »

terminally hip

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

there is a difference between “hip” and “cool”; between “being hip” and “being cool”. hip cats know it, people worried about being cool don’t. and hell, i do, fer sure. it’s like the difference between fashion and style; between following the ever-changing but buyable trend or having your own sense of personal and self-generated bada-bing. between being “spiritual” and having “soul”. between having money and being rich. hipsters pride themselves on “knowing what’s hip”. people who “try” to be cool are more often, clueless sheep. hipsters don’t care what others think; coolsters do. hipsters live on the edge, maybe slightly over the edge, a little out of control, they push the boundaries, the norms. they gravitate to artists who do the same. dylan, picasso, miles, brando. these cats were hip. single names. invented new forms. defined hip for their generations. britney, christina, travolta, cruise, one names too, but only cool for a while. in and out of fashion.

do you have to be black to be hip? poor? dispossessed? an artist? i don’t think so. but it helps, of course. not having – is motivation, drive, ambition. makes you hungry. it demands you live in the moment, no cushion; it helps you invent new forms. not that fat cat rich people can’t be creative or invent things. they can. and do. but henry ford wasn’t hip. nor nelson rockefeller. nor even jackie, bobby or john f. kennedy. ray charles, sam cooke, otis redding, john coltrane, andy warhol, jackson pollack; the cats were hip.

the opposite of hip – square, daddio. from the old beatnik days. not too far from “uncool”, but still different. “uncool” – not in fashion, not fitting in with the pack. a nerd, a geek, someone different, someone ostracized. someone judged on the way they look or behave. but more externally so. a “square”? not too different… but more philosophically so. someone who just doesn’t get it. doesn’t want to. won’t try. sex, drugs, new music, new ideas. anything new, out of the ordinary. “no, not for me.” george bush – square. proudly so, but square nonetheless. conservatives in general, fundamentalists, not hip. folks who follow the biblical and family tradition. people who won’t think for themselves, or who, when they do, end up only with what was handed down, thought before.

are you hip, babies? have i hipped you?

what the fuck, trules? who cares, you say? are you the self-appointed cyber arbiter of “hip”?

well, no. definitely not. but you see, i’m afraid i’m losing my hip. my right one, to be exact. to long term, chronic and painful osteo arthritis. to a hip replacement. to a hip replacement i’ve been avoiding for the last three or four years, even though i’ve heard it’s the most highly successful joint replacement procedure going. i mean, who wants to replace their hip? i certainly don’t. i’m hip enough, man. i’m pushing 60 and i’m still wearing black 501 levis with the button fly. i mean, i saw jazz piano genius, mccoy tyner, and african singing maestro, salif keita, both, in a single week at LA’s hippest and most edgy edifice, frank fucking gehry’s disney concert hall. i mean, i married a young beautiful indonesian princess, 30 years my junior, married for the first time at 54 to a brown skinned beauty who hardly spoke any english and who seemingly had none of my cultural or generational hip-ass references like dylan or elvis or king or brando or picasso or miles or coltrane. i mean, if that’s not hip and edgy and risky and out of fucking bounds, my main messieurs et madames, then i don’t know what the hell is?

but yeah, i gots to replace my hip. five days in the hospital, two months recovery. crutches, pain, physical therapy, rehabilitation, more pain. all to reduce the pain i gots now because i’m losing my hip. no more cartilage. seems i wore it out from seven years of forced turnout – of my hip – when was a modern dancer, age 21- 28. now i cain’t gets me outta no car without de pain. i cain’t play me no tennis like i done played for forty years of my life. i cain’t run, i cain’t sleep, i cain’t stretch, dance, even walk in de park widout de pain. i needs me a hip – replacement.

you see, i’ze getting old. like i sez, pushing 60. and i keep rememberin’ back when i was 25 and my pops was turnin’ 55 (five years younger than i am now). it was my pops’ birthday, and he was standin’ in the long beige hallway, outside my cowboy yellow painted boyhood bedroom. he poked his still young head in and said, “i can’t believe i’m turning 55 today. it seems so old. and i still just feel like little joey trules inside.” and i remember that. ‘til this day. it was so strong. and so surprising. that my dad, my father, 30 years my senior, still felt like a child, or maybe a teenager, inside his head. and that maybe everyone felt that way as they grew older and older year after year. still felt like “little joey trules inside”. and that maybe it would be the same for me. that when i was 55 or pushing 60, that maybe it would be the same. still feel like the younger version of myself inside. not feel like all the years my fully middle-aged bodied had accrued. and i do. and it does.

and my dad is going to be 90 this year, still 30 years older than me, his first born son. amazing how he keeps ahead like that. and his body is barely chugging along, after 3 heart attacks, 2 aneurism operations, after prostate cancer, after losing his dear and only wife of 57 years to a stroke, he’s still there. i wonder if he still feels like “little joey trules inside”. honestly, i really doubt that he does. but i promise myself to ask him this year on his 90^th, or on father’s day in june.

and what the hell? am i not hip anymore? do i dig john maier or kanye west? yeah, sure. but i still listen to jazz and often think rap, hip hop, and house are limited and one dimensional. do i give a damn about branjelina, the war in iraq, or the warming of the planet? (no to the first, yes to the next two.) or does it even matter? what will i be, what will i become, with my artificial, new-fangled hip? will it get me back on the tennis courts? get me down in the hilly terraced gardens of echo park again, planting tomatoes, spinach, and zucchini in my backyard sprinkled with the ashes of my mother and hip, criminal uncle? will it afford me some old school or new school bedroom acrobatics with my young, still learning and still growing wife? and what if the operation goes badly? will i end up with a bad hip? be terminally hip? terminally un-hip?

and what finally, does it mean to be hip? to get a new hip? to have a new hip? to give up one’s old hip? one’s hipness? to grow old? to lose one’s loved ones? to age? to die?

parta life, you say. fuck america, with its obsessive pre-occupation with youth. with it’s neurotic, unrealistic fear of death. look at mexico with its day of the dead. the dead come back for a friendly annual visit. look at indonesia with its hindu balinesian cremation ceremonies, where they believe the penultimate part of life’s journey is into the eternal afterlife. these cultures and people don’t fear death; they respect it, accept it – as part of life.

now that’s hip, eh babies?

whataya think? drop me a “comment”, eh?

(un)hiply yours,

-trules

Posted in ageing, american culture, cool, culture, hip, hipness, medicine | 2 Comments »

wati and andrei, a thanksgiving day blog

Thursday, November 23rd, 2006

i brought my wife-to-be here to LA from indonesia on august 3, 2001. we had met on the lovely island of bali a little over a year before in the early summer of 2000. we e-mailed each other for several months, she in “broken” english, and i went back to visit her for almost a month around christmas time and new years. we traveled across the island of java together, taking night buses through the drenched green rain forests for ten hours at a haul, touring the great buddhist temples in borobudur, riding small horses up into the active volcanic crater at gunung bromo, watching the traditional ramayana dance-stories and shadow puppets in yogakarta, and getting to know each other just a little bit. it wasn’t easy, with the tri-chasms of language, culture, and age, almost thirty years, between us.

yet by the time i came back to LA, we had decided she would move here if and when i could help her get all the paperwork in order. still months before 9/11, i was able to persuade/brow beat the american consul general in surabaya, a rare, sensitive and responsible career diplomat, to grant her a five-year multiple entry visa. this was quite a feat, since we didn’t want to get her the standard tourist visa for just six months, nor a “fiancé” visa, on the condition that we would marry, also within six months. although it was the fiancé visa which was constantly suggested to us by immigration lawyers and experts, it being the document which could both expedite the waiting period, as well as give the authorities a shorter, more specified time period in which she would have to leave the country after having been granted the privilege of entering. as i said though, after many e-mails to the consul general in surabaya, all arguing against the time pressure and commitment of getting married within six months to a woman i hardly knew, i think my persistence and sincerity just wore the poor man down. so that after five months of nagging correspondence, when my lovely wife to be finally managed to get her passport in bali, the visa was granted, and i was able to buy her a round trip plane ticket from denpasar to los angeles. the round trip ticket, something the INS also required.

i remember waiting for her at the tom bradley international arrivals terminal. i held a huge, hand-lettered sign in my arms with her name on it, “wati” (meaning “girl” in bahasa indonesian). i was nervous as hell, having never been married, and now, for some desperate or unknown reason, having invited a woman to live with me for the first time in almost twenty years. i could only imagine how she felt, flying for the first time on an eighteen hour flight from bali, the little jewel island in the third world, to big bad, wonderful los angeles. giving up everything she knew of comfort, language, and familiarity to take a risk on this old “panjang boulay”, i.e. long-nosed gringo.when i use the word “privilege” to describe the ability her visa gave her to enter the country, i’m not being facetious. for what i re-learned and rediscovered, much to my surprise, in this relationship adventure now going on six years, was that “america” still was, and is, the land of opportunity. this is saying a lot, coming from a dyed in the wool american ex-pat wannabe. someone who not only turned on, tuned in, and dropped out of middle class american culture in the 60s and 70s, but who is also absolutely infuriated and ashamed of his government’s policy in the middle east and around the world at the dawn of the twenty first century. american empire, capitalist hegemony, war on terror, definitely a “not” in my book.

to say wati arrived in LA with minimal english speaking skills would be an irrefutable understatement. looking at our first e-mails to each other, way back in 2000, make us both laugh out loud today. “helo, eric trules. enjoy meet with you. when you come agan to bali? well, bye bye. luv, wati.” this, with the help an english-indonesian dictionary and many hours in the internet shop. sure, she had taken a few required english courses back in high school, but not in many years, and whereas her vocabulary was extremely limited, her grammar and writing skills were virtually non-existent. she had never dreamed of or aspired to come to america, so although english was a well known supplement to every forward-looking person on the planet, in her case it was not essential. but now, by some unforeseen and synchronistic twist of fate, here she was in Lala land.

enter “evans community adult school”, the largest ESL (english as a second language) school in the country, and fortunately for us, right down the street on sunset and figueroa, about five minutes from our home. evans was a miraculous discovery for us both. for her, it was a free english-teaching school right down the street with seemingly terrific teachers, which offered classes from six in the morning to almost midnight. it fit anyone’s schedule. for me, evans was a free english-teaching school that offered classes to immigrants and non-english speakers, regardless of nationality or proper legal identification.as i said, this came as quite a surprise to me. i mean, how could this country, this city, offer free classes to students without proper, “legal”, immigration papers? doing so sounded illegal in itself. too generous. too socialistic. too outside the government’s knowledge. i mean, who did pay for it? well, as i soon discovered, with just the barest amount of inquiry, the los angeles city school district paid for it. it paid the teachers from six to midnight. it paid for the rental of the building. for the administration and advertisement of the classes. it paid for student services, college counseling, citizenship preparation and training. all without cost to the student, excepting six dollars for a student picture ID. amazing, no? certainly, yes. the theory being one of inclusion: teach the non-english speakers coming to this country, legal, illegal, how to speak the language and become productive members of the city and society. teach them to become citizens.

teach who? teach the doctors, nurses, dentists, and accountants coming from china, russia, israel, brazil, armenia, and japan. the professionals who came here for marriage, political asylum, opportunity, and freedom. teach them to speak english so they could take the licensing exams in their respective fields. become doctors, lawyers, dentists, nurses, accountants – here in america. teach the illegal immigrants from mexico, ecuador, el salvador, and guatemala. teach them to speak better english, to be able to enter the work force at mcdonald’s, taco bell, in the parking garages, in the hotels and restaurants all across the city, as they studied, worked, and integrated themselves into our multi-cultural, 164 language-speaking, city of angels. teach the poor, the rich, the undocumented, the illegal – teach them all – regardless of ethnicity, skill, economic status, or caste. all were welcome at evans. all you needed was six bucks and a desire to learn english as a second language.imagine this kind of inclusive governmental policy employed around the globe. in france, germany, holland, and england, where the politics of exclusion and of racial strife and division are currently and rampantly dividing the world into clashes between civilizations. imagine that right here, in good ol’ LA, city of caverns between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots, the beverly hillians and the east los angelenos, imagine right here – was evans community adult school, leveling the playing field and offering english and inclusion to anyone who wanted to step up and play.

as i watched wati begin with level1 ESL classes and work her way up through level 2, level 3, and level 4 IEP classes (the “intensive english program”, available to those students who could commit to a serious five day a week study routine), i also watched first hand, how people from different cultures, different lands, different walks of life – all came together at this multi-lingual, multi-cultural melting pot. i watched with joy and envy as the shy indonesian girl i had invited to los angeles to live with me, made friends with young men and young women from japan, china, mexico, armenia, brazil, russia, and vietnam, from all over the globe. educated people, uneducated people. husbands, wives, and children. doctors, lawyers, and indian chiefs – from all around the lonely planet. it was eye-opening – and marvelous. it gave me a whole new view of my city, my country, my government. come to america and learn english .for free.

a month and eight days after wati came to LA, the twin towers collapsed in shock and awe in new york, my home town. we got a call at six in the morning, still in bed, and turned on the tv. we saw the day unravel in front of our eyes. but what i saw and what wati saw were two different things. me? i saw what most of your reading this piece saw. death, destruction, terror, and the world being altered within a single hour in a way that has forever changed all of our lives ever since. wati? what she saw, i think, was more like the movie, “towering inferno”, on the tv news. shown over and over, in an endless loop of shock and confusion that she couldn’t quite understand. new york was a place she didn’t know. seeing buildings collapse, smoke, fire, and death, was something she saw in volcanic eruptions, otherwise on tv. coming from a small village in sumatra before she moved to bali at age eighteen, she never went to “the movies”. that was an extraneous luxury. her mother brought up six kids on her own after her husband was killed in a motor bike accident, and the kids helped the mother run a small all-purpose grocery store in medan, the largest city on the island in the fourth most populous nation on earth.

9/11, at first, meant very little to my soon-to be wife.still, she attended evans classes. she learned english. she studied hard. eventually, she landed a job as a bartender through one of her thai friends at evans. at first, she didn’t pay taxes. she worked “under the table”. not that it was necessary for her to do so; we had done all the paperwork, jumped through all the hoops, legally. but other girls, other bartenders hadn’t. the owners paid cash. the IRS was not part of the equation. the IRS made no visits to the thai bars, to the parking garages, where her international, english-learning friends worked. this was america 2001, 2002, still the land of opportunity, the land of taking free ESL classes, studying when you could, getting a job, sending money back to the kids or parents in your home country, and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. and as i said before, and i’ll say again, this was a lesson in civic policy for me, a lesson in ambition and idealism, a lesson about the ability of the human spirit to aspire, to achieve, to succeed. right here in my own back yard. in the jaded and ravenous city of LA. 9/11 mattered less to this bright-eyed and ambitious community of new immigrants than did study, hard work, paying the bills, and carving out a new life for each and every one of them.

last weekend, more than five years after wati arrived in LA, and more than three years after we had married on valentine’s day of 2003, we were invited to the birthday party of one wati’s oldest friends from evans. andrew, ney “andrei” from siberia, hadn’t been back to evans in perhaps more than three years now. he was too busy working as a masseur and building a new life for himself in los angeles. over the years, we hand invited andrew to several of our parties at our home in echo park. he had met and charmed a whole bevy of our friends, from hollywood actors and casting directors, to trendy shop owners on beverly boulevard, to philanthropists in the medical field. he had voluntarily given several of them free massages in an effort to both share his passion for his work, and more pragmatically, to build up his clientele. i have never met anyone more passionate than andrew about his work. he lives it, breathes it, and works it twenty four hours a day. you can call him at two in the morning for a massage, and he’ll get out of bed, and drive over to your home with his table. he has plans, and ideas, and dreams to build up a massage practice for office workers all over the city. in my opinion, with his russian accent, his ragged good looks, and his passion for massage, andrew is ready for prime time. just point a tv camera at him, and he’ll soon be the rasputin of reflexology. the master of massage. andrew is making his way in america.

so there we are, last saturday, at andrew’s 45^th birthday party – at the new “red pearl” restaurant on melrose. the red pearl has just opened two months ago, and it’s obviously a winner. it’s packed with beautiful people, offering a menu of pan southeast asian hors d’oevres, noodle and shrimp delicacies, and rounds and rounds of refillable red wine and champagne. wati and i are the only non-russian speakers there. “andrew” has apparently reverted back again to being called “andrei”, and the laughter and conversation overflow – in russian – with only occasional asides and translations for us gringos and boulays. imagine, my indonesian wife is the same outsider as i am amongst this crowd. it’s great fun. the wine flows, and the long table of russians keep trading seats, hugging each other, and swapping stories in russian. some speak better english than others, but we can understand them all when they go out of their way to include us. what is particularly striking to me is my wife’s behavior. she’s talking to everyone. sure, she’s had a couple of glasses of red wine, but she’s telling dirty jokes, immigrant jokes, to her captive russian audience. in english! around my friends, the educated and sometimes pretentious bourgeoisie, she is often mute. my friends are intimidating. they’re too old. she has nothing in common with them. they are native english speakers.

the night and dinner pour along, and after coffee, dessert, and a white wine after-dinner offering, the party is ready to hightail it over to andrei and irena’s (andrei’s new wife) apartment in atwater village. the bill comes and guess who picks it up? that’s right, the birthday boy, andrei. it’s his treat. the total? i’d guess it’s at least a thousand bucks. twenty people, at least 50 dollars a head. andrei doesn’t mention it, he just pays. it doesn’t surprise anyone, not even me, although i am simultaneously shocked with the generosity of his gesture. you see, although i wasn’t brought up in this tradition of magnanimity, i’ve been seeing it more and more often, amongst my wife’s immigrant friends. the birthday boy or girl pays. it’s their treat. their privilege of treating their closest friends to their birthday celebration. brazilian, indonesian, now russian. it’s a great tradition. hell, i challenge myself to treat sixty people to my upcoming 60^th birthday party!

we drive wati’s chic black 2002 RAV 4 over to andrei and irena’s in atwater. not my car, the dirty white ‘94 toyota corolla station wagon. sure, i like my car; it’s good for clay, the dog. but wati wants to give me the RAV 4 and buy herself her a new PT cruiser. she’s got credit, don’t you know. she’s embarrassed for me (and especially herself) to be seen in the old ’94 clunker. she’s nouveau riche, don’t you know again, or would like to be. nothing but the best for her. she wants to buy and own a house, a new car, and go shopping every day that she can. it’s a woman’s prerogative, of course, as well as the immigrant’s dream — all on her three day a week salary, and her husband’s far too skimpy professor’s salary from the local private university.andrei and irena’s one bedroom apartment is modest but comfortable. it reminds me of my first rent-controlled pad in santa monica. back then in ’83, it was $359 a month, but i’m sure andrei and irena pay something more like $1500 a month in today’s market. the place is furnished modestly as well: a couch, perhaps from ikea, a bedroom with psychedelic day-glo accoutrements, and a kitchen table once again overflowing with a generous spread from the nearby local trader joe’s: mixed sushi, rolled turkey and arugala sandwiches, and russian desserts of all kinds. how could anyone eat another bite after the red pearl orgy? but eat we do. and drink some more, of course. but now we move onto the vodka. it’s kettle one, along with various bottles with names i’ve never seen, no less able to pronounce. they’re obviously russian vodkas, only the best. stolichnaya? please! that’s rot gut, not drinkable for even the masses of moscow.

we eat, drink, and be merry. the twenty of us are joined by a few more late night russians. two musicians, a truck driver, an accounting consultant, some alternative medicine types. all first generation immigrants. most here on political asylum. their tourist and student visas have long ago expired, and they have been granted political asylum visas, no doubt all working their way toward permanent residency and citizenship. my impression of this friendly and festive gang of russians is that their lives are hard. they work, go to school, scheme of ways of “making it” in america. but to me, already way too comfortable and familiar with the ravages and ruts of middle age, their lives are alive – and beautiful. america is the land of milk and honey and opportunity for these immigrants. one of andrei’s friend’s, boris, one of the few that has lived here for almost thirty years, tells me that the reason that they party so hearty and enjoy themselves so much amongst fellow russian immigrants, is that many of them feel isolated here in america. they feel, and are reminded of, their fragile immigrant status, their lack of language proficiency, daily. amongst their fellow russian immigrants, they can speak their native language, without the constant pressure of translating their hearts and minds into english. they can let down their hair, they can escape the constant grind and reality of being foreigners in a foreign land.

i think of my lovely indonesian wife. and i think of siberian andrei, the mad monk of LA massage. and i think how beautifully they fit into the fabric of this country we call america. sure, i know i romanticize their lives. i know my wife still often feels overwhelmed with her life here, with her future still being unknown, with the challenges of ESL level 5, now at LA city college on vermont avenue. and then i remember back when we visited new york over christmas of 2002, after we had recently returned from eight months of living and my teaching in malaysia. we stayed with a former student of mine in astoria, queens. ben was working for disney in a good office job on 42^nd street, but he still couldn’t afford the astronomical rents of manhattan. the thing was, in 2002, astoria was still the land of first generation immigrants. greeks, puerto ricans, east europeans, latinos, it was a patchwork quilt of languages, foods, and cultures. i loved it. wati loved it. and it reminded me of my jewish-american grandparents, first generation immigrants who came to america in the early part of the 20^th century from kharkov and kiev, and from places that are now called belarus and ukraine. my grandparents, who were grocers and house painters, truck drivers and tailors, working their way up the economic immigrant ladder, just like andrei and his russian friends in LA. just like my lovely indonesian wife and her multi-cultural, language-bending ESL friends at evans.

we’re going to new york again this christmas and new years. we’re lucky and privileged to be doing so. especially my wife, who five years ago had never before even been on an airplane. we’ll be staying with some of my old new york friends, some of whom live in exorbitantly priced condos and lofts in midtown manhattan, and some of whom live further out in the immigrant boonies of brooklyn and queens, and others, even further out in the suburbs of long island, where i grew up, when my GI dad came back from “the good war”, world war 2, and this country once again created an opportunity for its citizens and soldiers to go back to college and to buy cheap homes in the first suburbs in america called levittown and westbury, new york. and i know that as i wrap myself in new york’s winter wonderland of wools, sweaters, and overcoats on the steam-belching streets of new yawk, i will be sharing it all with young wati, my lovely immigrant wife from sumatra and bali, indonesia. and i already know that we will be sending a picture post card of the big apple to andrei and irena back in atwater village, who i anticipate full well, will be visiting the big apple themselves one day – very soon – and in style – bottles of russian vodka flowing, as it did with my grandparents and their warm and hard-working community of neighbors, well over a hundred years ago before.

this morning, thanksgiving day, wati and i went out for a light brunch to “happy tom’s”, echo park’s cheapest and best mexican eatery. where on weekends and holidays we can bring clay, the dog, to sit with us at the sidewalk café’s barrio-bohemian-constantly gentrifying outdoor tables. wati had the usual, huevos rancheros, her favorite, and i had the quesadillas with jamon and cheese. needless to say it was delicious. later this afternoon, we’ll be going to rancho palos verdes to eat turkey with one of my old new york friends, a marvel of a man, son of an immigrant no doubt, who every five years or so, goes near bankrupt, only to arise phoenix-like, to make another million and buy another house, palace, or castle. this one in palos verdes is supposed to be the castle.

ah…… america, there is still something to love and believe in.

Posted in american culture, immigration, indonesian culture, russian culture | 5 Comments »

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