happy 25th

birthday present to myself this year: seeing Jens Lekman perform solo in a posh bar overlooking the LA skyline.

who wants to be my date?

end of year crazies

my 6th graders are merely 10 days away from the 7th grade!
which means i am only 10 days away from being done with my two-year TFA commitment and what has been a wild and enormously challenging and life-changing experience. i would be sad if i didn't feel i am really really reaaally earning my indefinite vacation from teaching.

just last week, i had my first fist fight of the year, which is a record, i think. (i believe last year it took only a matter of months). even more impressive, it didn't technically happen in my classroom, but outside my door during the 5-minute passing period. still, it was between two of my students, and since they are now both suspended and having parent conferences, i feel i can safely say that even without me providing my students a count down, they have already begun their familiar end of year race to the finish rituals.

the last weeks of the school year in LA go a little like this:
the heat turns up, and the AC's not working, so the kids are sweaty, uncomfortable, and honestly, a little stanky. (and this has been a fantastically chill summer in terms of temperatures, yet breaking past 75 in Culver City.)
the CSTs were several weeks ago, at the beginning of May, so the kids think they're "done" with school and with learning and they're sole purpose in coming to school is to hang out.
the administrators and some teachers too are getting laid off and losing their jobs, so they start giving little shit what happens on campus.
things inevitably start spiraling out of control before a huge crack down occurs, in which every "problem child" at the school gets sent home early for the summer, an "extended suspension." some good kids and some smart kids get caught up in the mix when they jump into a riot or a fight with their friends and/or siblings, and i lose some of my favorite students, like Ciera who looks like my friend dylan from college, or Salvador, a well-mannered hispanic boy who got caught up in a fight defending himself after someone socked him in the face.

just now i got an automated phone call from the school principal, a message intended for parents, explaining that if students are not kept at home by their parents for the "remainder of their suspension" (that is, the rest of the year) they would be cited for trespassing and fined. wow, what a message for the parents and community. STAY OUT OF OUR SCHOOL YOU HAVE WORN YOUR WELCOME, WE WILL USE FORCE AND LITIGIOUSNESS AND DEMEANING LANGUAGE IF NECESSARY.

at least some good news:
this evening, i got an email from my student Anthony, who wrote me to tell me this:

hi its me anthony i am learning more math because my mom is helping me on it so i am ready for the final test.and by the way this is anthony(last name) in your first and second period class.

i will be glad for all the drama and oppressive incompetence of LAUSD to be over, but i sure am going to miss my students. truth be told, they are the only reason i've been able to keep this up the whole time.

behold! the first ever picture of me and my class (minus several suspended students).

-miss lee

ugh.

what is the point of this?



the only possible outcomes of this much rain are:
1) mudslides

and 2) one helluva work week (children are like gremlins when it rains)

i think it's time to burrow down until next saturday.
-stef

(home)sick

awoke this morning: cold, tummy-aching, missing the sound of ppl talking in the kitchen below me. missed going to the windows and seeing snow over everything.

flying into LA last night made my stomach hurt. i think the appropriate response for flying over a city should be awe or excitement, feeling like you're arriving someplace. but i saw the million lights, the traffic jams, the density and sprawl of this city manifest, and i felt a sick longing for the bluegrass.

exit plane, enter breezeway, begin panic attack.

boarded taxi. a small blue-eyed man with an unidentifiable accent drives me to my school where i left my car. we listened to some conservative talk radio show, the duration of the ride being the same host reiterating the same point over and over again, with increasingly dripping vitriol. "the new full body scanners at airports will specifically take pictures of genitalia, male and female genitalia, these scumbags will be looking at every crack, fold, and imprint on your genitals. they will look at the details of your genitals to see if you have explosives or not. if they can't see every crack, wrinkle and fold on your genitals..."

i open the window to drown out the noise, and to keep myself from throwing up all over the backseat.

the ride was short, only $14 on the meter, but the driver asks me for $17.50 ("flat rate," he says, while clearing the meter). i give him what i have, which is $18, and he demands more. "are you trying to make a point?" "no, i just want to go home." i look around nervously as he angrily argues with me, and i begin to worry about the lack of other people around, the dark, how far away i am from my car. he eventually gets back in the taxi, and i sheepishly say thank you, relieved.

i get home to an empty apartment that smells vaguely of spoiled food. notes on my desk reminding myself what to pack, a glass of water left on the table, slippers left where they were taken off, a half box of uneaten cookies – it's not that the apartment doesn't feel lived in, but i feel so alone.

a south central thanksgiving

i had my advisory students make "hand-turkeys" and write letters of thanks-giving to loved ones. they turned out really well. my student andrew gave me permission to share what he did:

dear dad,
im thankful for giving me a roof over my head. thank you for making money to leave food on the table and clothes on my back.

dear mom, i'm thankful for all the thing you do for me like doing your best to get us to move for a better life.

dear grandmah cristina,
i'm thankful for opening your doors to me because you know that south central is a bad area.

---

and other turkeys my students created:



find something to be thankful for,
and give thanks,
stef

reality bites

Michael: Ok, so dig this. You’re on the street, and one of your gang disses you.
Darryl: Oh my goodness.
Michael: Yeah. Right. So what do you do to get ‘em to make it right?
Darryl: Well, see, um, in the gang world, we use something called fluffy fingers.
Michael: What is that?
Darryl: That’s when someone really gets in your face, you know you just, start ticklin’ ‘em.
Michael: Really?
Darryl: Yeah. And he starts tickling you. And pretty soon you laughing and hugging. Before you know it, you’ve forgotten the whole thing. Y’all just go to church together, and get an ice cream cone.
Michael: I would have never thought that gangs would be tickling each other.
Darryl: Oh, it’s effective.

---

i’m so glad Michael Scott doesn’t live in south central. i’m pretty sure he’d have been shanked by one of my 6th graders by now.

sherlock you're not

just got off the phone with my aide. apparently, my 6th grade students think i'm pregnant because i haven't returned to school for 3 days. first order of business when i get back: reteaching the science lesson on collecting data and making inferences.

(actual reason: came down with the flu and a pretty nasty sinus infection. the doctor i saw seemed pretty grossed out by the drainage she witnessed in the back of my throat and told me, when i said i almost went into work that day, that if she were my boss, she'd rather i stayed at home than have to look at me. also: her office was decked out with signed photos from celebs, including the likes of owen wilson and the cast of friends. one particularly strange quote from dennis quaid read, "you can examine me anytime, doc!")

portraits of a city

LA can really be breathtaking sometimes.

fight the power

i just got back from a long walk to/from the Culver City Farmer's Market.

while crossing the street on the way there, i saw a cop car turn on its siren and edge thru a line of waiting cars at a busy intersection.

on the way back, i saw what seemed to be the same cop car flash its lights, get in the opposite lane, and speed past the line of cars waiting to turn right.

had it really been the same car? if so, i'd just witnessed two abuses of power, and all for what seemed to be a joy ride power trip around the block.

pretty exciting stuff for a tuesday night.
...
i got plums! juicy.

a tale of two cities

i miss the accessible smallness of my hometown, lexington, ky. los angeles is such a sprawling mess of tangled freeways and traffic that i can't make myself enjoy the immensity of the city because the moment i get in a car it's road rage stephanie, and she's no fun to be around.

today, lexington's smallness was most tangibly felt in the form of an exhilirating bike ride. i really miss the bike as a tenable form of transportation. growing up, the bike was an accessory for recreational neighborhood cruising. living in chicago changed that, the bike became a vehicle for daily revolution, a war horse for corking traffic. it is amazing how a city opens up before you when you have two wheels and yr feet to take you anywhere, unbound to the flow of traffic, easily taking yrself off the map and into walkable terrain, cutting between lines and breezing by waiting cars.

as i rode my bike to the ice cream store today, i felt young and vibrant like a kid again. being on the bike felt so good, i couldn't help smiling the whole time, up against traffic, wind in my face, singing "Thunder Road"* the whole way there, and "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" the whole way back.

i kept thinking, american history has got it all wrong. independence wasn't born on the wheels of the Model T, nor was it found in the cross-country voyages of bikers on Harley Davidsons. it was this, right here, a girl jumping on a bike and pedaling her way thru bluegrass, independent of petroleum and the help of her parents to deliver her to her destination.

when i get back to LA, i'm finding myself a bike. everything seems better from the saddle of a bike.

and behold! the wonderful glisten of post-biking sweat!

love and stuff,
s


*"...well the night's busting open, these two lanes'll take us anywhere! we got one last chance to make it real, to trade in these wings on some wheels. climb in back, heaven's waiting on down the tracks..."

the way we do

i can't help but think that if this were "the wild," baby squirrel would have been eaten by an owl or a fox or a baby raccoon by now.

but, seeing as how this occurred in LA, my argument is invalid. Angelinos are all about preserving unnatural ways of life (we live in the middle of a fecking desert for feck's sake.)

comparing urban experiences

a portrait i took on the bike path from Hyde Park to upper downtown.
this photograph always exemplified the entire chicago experience for me: contented solitude in the midst of vastness.

you know, it's funny. my friend asked me the other day why i love chicago so much. and i really didn't have a compelling reason for him, aside from the obvious: public transportation, access to concerts, Millennium Park. beyond that and i'd have to go into a longer history of my interaction with that place.

it's not like Chicago's weather is even that great. when i lived there in the summer of 2006 it was sweltering hot and humid, and i lived without a.c. i sucked it up and refused to pay for such extravagance, knowing that strength and endurance emerge from a furnace. when i spent hours in the hot summer sun at Pitchfork and Lollapalooza that year, i hardly even sweat it (idiomatically speaking, that is). when i think back on it, i don't even recall being uncomfortable with the heat. i wore skirts a lot that summer, cut my hair real short, wore bathing suits under my clothes on the weekends. i sweat a lot but learned to not mind so much.

and it's not like life was easy. i worked two jobs, one at the Field Museum and the other as a field journalist/videographer for an indy news group. it was a 9-5 gig with on-call jobs over the weekends and sporadic meetings in the evenings. i remember hating the desk job at the museum at first, but then learning ways of using the space as a resource and finding my own projects to work on. i was never bored and never felt overworked. in fact, i recall working all day on a net neutrality video on a Saturday, from the 1 o'clock lunch with a co-worker that inspired the need for action, walking home writing a script (/rant) in my head, getting back to the apartment, starting up the camera, and recording/editing until 3 am in the morning, just for fun, because the project meant something to me. there were endless reports and meetings to do at the Field as well, but they were always fascinating and exciting and diverse enough in nature that it never became stifling.

it was the first time i'd ever lived in a big city, too. and i was by myself, without a car, without any friends or family in the city, no knowledge of how public trans worked. i was scared to take buses and trains at night. scared to leave the apartment after sun down. it was the first time i'd lived in an apartment (and in the worst part of town!) it was my first time grocery shopping for myself, the first time cooking (or attempting to) for myself. it was my first time using a gas stove, and i was afraid of gas leaks so never ended up using it. this is how my diet came to consist of mostly cold and raw foods for 3 months of my life. i was practically a live vegan, but i ate a lot of cheese and crackers. it was the first time i was overwhelmed with the possibilities of so many things at once, and i was so completely new to the experience of all of it.

but, that was the year i walked everywhere. and, when i got tired of walking, i found a couple who was willing to lend me a bike for the summer, and i rode along Lake Michigan and explored the city beaches. that was the year i joined Critical Mass and made 1,000 friends at once. that was the year i did yoga after work on the floor of a Maori house exhibit in the museum, and again in Millennium Park on weekend mornings, saluting the sun thru metallic beams. i spent afternoons walking thru art museums or photographing street performers. i read a book a week. i drew! i wrote poetry and listened to music. i danced. i took 30 minute train rides to chinatown to eat mango fried rice from a bamboo bowl. and that was the year i accidentally stranded myself in the worst part of town when the trains stopped running. it was the year i learned to make salsa from scratch and all-natural ingredients, and the year i fell asleep listening to Band of Horses' Funeral almost every night.

it's amazing to me to remember all of this, and there is still so much i could say. and though i have a penchant for reminiscing, this is hardly nostalgia at all, memory imbued with illusion from the passage of time. for though i never ate warm foods, and never had a.c., and was always working and walking and alone, i never felt unhappy, unfull, uncomfortable, or hungry. i was restless for more, but always well-rested, my skin was glowing and i felt young and alive and vibrant.

---

compare with now: i live with a childhood friend, but we hardly talk. i feel alone most days, even though i have many friends in the city and family nearby as well. i have a car but i'm terrified of driving it. LA traffic scares me and driving with the windows down is no longer considered part of a pleasurable experience. i lament missing good concerts b/c the venues are far away and the shows expensive. i have a fully functional kitchen and though i've gotten good at making fod for myself, i don't enjoy it, and hardly have the appetite for anything i make. still, i feel constantly hungry, go to bed hungry some nights. i don't sleep well, i toss and turn, waking up worrying it's 7 am when it's not even 3:30 am. i watch a lot of tv, hardly ever read, and even though i am always working or preparing to work, i never feel i've accomplished anything.

and LA's weather is fine, but i hardly ever enjoy it.

return to the single life

i miss this.

if you read this regularly and wondered where i'd disappeared to in the last 2 weeks, yr answer is this: i've been here all along, but away from my computer! what do you think about that?!

the truth is that i spend far more time on the internet when i am alone. i used to worry i have become technology-dependent, but i realize now that it's just a proxy for communicating with ppl i can't live without. hm, well, that and a convenient distraction. but i could quit if i wanted to, and i did!

2 weeks was the exact amount of time my boyfriend was in LA. we were making up for lost time. 6 months is a long time not to see someone who makes you obliviously and ridiculously happy. but now he's gone again, still in transit on his return to that lucky country of Turkey. and now things are quiet and lonely. it's back to cooking dinners for two and only eating half, saving leftovers in tupperware containers, not drinking wine and lighting candles, brushing my teeth all by myself, taking a week to finish a carton of orange juice, taking a week and a half to finish a loaf of bread, waiting in line at the grocery store all by myself, sorting receipts and grading papers, working out obsessively and yes, blogging, twittering, tumblring, and checking email because now i have the time.

there are infinite daily events in modern life that have the potential to be either extremely gratifying or intensely miserable. these ritual behaviors can be vastly improved by pleasant companionship, eased by a reassuring hand or the proximity of a familiar human touch. unfortunately, these are frequently things we take for granted, and these events comprise the majority of every day. and as with so many things, we notice and lament the lack more than we appreciate the presence, sometimes. it is bad enough to feel so alone, but then something as small as getting into a car and looking over to the passenger seat and realizing there's no one there to talk to or hold yr hand thru rush hour traffic, or to notice all the leftover pasta in the pan after you're already full, those are things that make you heartsick.

coming back to my apartment last night after dropping Ben off at the airport encapsulated the feeling that lingers this evening as i write this, that will probably persist in all its manifest forms for the next 4 months until i see him again or have another visitor: an empty apartment, only my clothes in a messy heap on the chair, pillows stacked on one side of the bed, one set of towels, one toothbrush in a cup.

i once wrote that returning to an empty apartment after weeks of constant companionship is perhaps the most depressing experience imaginable. but i was wrong. what saddens me most is returning to the way life is, rather than the way it could be.

-stephan!e

leisure

listening to my little cousin make bird noises as he sleeps. i am cradling a book of short stories in my arm, drowsy from drinking too many glasses of milk. it is not yet 10:30 and the house has grown quiet with weariness.

it is finally the weekend. we are free to fall asleep early.

layer cake

night-swimming has become the one indulgence i allow myself every week. and it’s a good choice: it’s exercise that’s good for my bad hip. i like to secretly race the older macho men in their speedos, observe the human body as it moves underwater (the water aerobics class in the shallow water brings to mind images of elephants swimming, clumsy limbs thrashing through water), everything illuminated and given a milky glow by the underwater lamps, like submarine headlights. and at the end of my laps, i like to float on my back, my ears submerged in water, imagining myself out at sea in endless darkness, navigating by the stars.

the delightful thing about swimming, and perhaps swimming in a pool in particular, is that it heightens your senses. you feel reconnected to yourself, notice the movement of your own body, feel your spine lengthening, listen to and feel your own breath. you feel graceful and amphibious. and the low resistance silence provides such a stimulating contrast to the other 95% of my waking day.

the most alluring and troubling heightened sense? smell. chlorinated pool water has the magic ability of collecting all the smells from the surrounding day, and stacking them on the water, like layer cake. as my face skims the surface of the water for a breath, i open my mouth and suck in the potent smells of the day: sunlight and sunscreen, burnt tire rubber from LA traffic, manure and mowed grass, the charcoal smokiness of the barbeque down the street, leaves and a smell i associate with crickets, sweat, skin, b.o.

sometimes the smells are so thick and rich, i crinkle my nose, sneeze underwater, or get teary-eyed, like i’ve just sliced into an onion. other times, they remind me of the way it feels when you’re at summer camp, heading back inside over tall grass after a day in the sun, the mixture of grass and dusk creating a haze, and you feel safe lingering in it.

misery+

i just spent 30 minutes on the phone with my old piano teacher, miserably detailing every daily routine and responsibility i'll resume when i return to LA: "yep, i teach classes and then i go to grad school... no, i don't really eat dinner on those days... yea, i teach 70 kids... math and science... no, there's not a lot of support from the administration... oh, it's ok, i'm used to being alone now... yea, there's not much time for anything else..." making excuses so my life doesn't sound so sad, and then wondering how pathetic i must sound on the phone. i've never been good at hiding my tone.

i realized during these 30 minutes that i hate talking about my work, almost more than the work itself. i do not want to go back.

meanwhile, i am flipping thru a travel magazine, thinking about a summer in Turkey, clicking thru my tumblr blog and labeling my writing, thinking about a shop-drop project i want to begin working on, if only i didn't have this job to go back to...

(this blog has become such a drag, apologies. the other day i came close to starting over, again. it's been 3 long years, can you believe it? hard to change a tone, you know? i recommend my tumblr for quick pieces of writing that are candid and unfiltered, and some pretty great images, too.)

i hate L.A.

hm, so you know how just yesterday i said i might grow to love L.A.? yea, it's not happening.

that's b/c L.A. is a vindictive little bitch who just wants my money and my time and attention, but i can't get no respect!

this morning, i wake up. the raindrops that were so pleasant to fall asleep to had apparently continued throughout the night, flooding the carport where my car rests and where i had to wade through 5 inch-deep FREEZING water this morning. and, b/c my bitch landlord didn't install lights in my part of the garage, i couldn't see the standing water until i was, well, already standing in it. so, great morning. i have to run back up to my apartment, throw off my shoes and socks, and improvise: for lack of galoshes (oh how i miss my big funky rubber galoshes right now...) i had to put on a pair of flip flops, which felt miserably uncomfortable on my bitterly cold feet.

the entire 55-60 minutes in the car on the freeway to work (what usually takes 20-25 minutes) everyone was driving 35 mph to avoid fatal crashes – the radio informed us accidents were happening at the rate of one every 30 seconds (wtf!?), a police officer (i learn later) was RUN DOWN while trying to assist traffic – and i still had assholes trying to sideswipe me to squeeze into my lane.

i get to school half an hour late (and this is after i even wake up early to make myself a cup of tea to start the day right), frantically driving in circles trying to find parking (i eventually coax the principal into my car and he assists me in finding a spot to park my poor water-logged vehicle). my feet are cramping at this point, they are so cold and wet, and i'm shivering and completely stiff from the cold and from running in the rain. basically, i arrive at school looking like a mess, feeling like a kid, and not wanting to be here (at school, at work, in LA).

it was a long day. the only thing that prevented me from completely losing my mind and crying was that i didn't actually teach today, i was in training. and they provided food. one saving grace.

i come home after going to the gym for a quick workout, hoping that all the time i've been away has allowed the water around my car to drain away. NOPE! the pond still exists, there might even be homeless seagulls nesting, who the fuck knows. all i can say is that this meant me having to park my car 2 blocks away, on some dark alley where i couldn't even see the signs or the curb to see if i was in a tow-away zone. i just hope, pray, that someone doesn't run into my car, knock the side mirror off, or decide it'd be fun to tow it. so many things to keep me up at night, it was hardly worth the 2 minutes of pleasant rain while i was drifting off last night...

seriously. it reminds me of something i remember my boyfriend saying last winter when we were driving around one late oxford night on the edge of a snow storm. it was the time of night when everyone is supposed to be asleep, when the snow machines and salt trucks come out (i think if you grow up in the midwest like i did, you know there are 5 stages of night-time: twilight, dusk, 8-11pm, midnight, and salt truck time. this is the time other ppl in other parts of the world might also know as tooth fairy time, or santa claus time.) there was snow falling in large clumpy flakes, and we could see it in his headlights, in the street lamplight, like static filling up the screen of gray and black night. and Ben said that ppl in ohio overreact to snow, b/c in Illinois, where he grew up, this would be nothing, "Illinois ppl know how to drive in snow." and that made sense, and that's what i think of now when i think about LA and its rain:

LA denizens are so unaccustomed to rain that they don't know how to drive in it, or how to build an efficient drainage system for when the rain pours. don't they know, that when it rains, it pours? i bet you anything a stupid Angelino coined that phrase...

-stephan!e


p.s. an afterthot: this is why you don't set up house in a desert. if there's no water so you have to steal it from yr neighbors to survive, and when the water finally comes you don't know what to do with it. ladies and gentlemen, Los Angeles! (a big fecking mess!)

sunday

the peaceful quiet of an empty apartment and all the neighbors gone on holiday,

the coziness of the kitchen while making dinner and the comforting whir and warmth of my new space heater, and

the look of the sky as the day is ending, the clouds backlighting the palm treetops with raspberry and tangerine

and a playlist of songs about the left and leaving, and a living room to dance and jump in

and, for once, not dreading monday

and, knowing i'm going home in only a few more days

make me feel, finally, that i could grow to love LA.

whipped cream cheese

an epicure-ious observation of Los Angeles:

since i've moved here, the only thing i've seen Angelinos serve with their bagels is whipped cream cheese. i didn't find it particularly odd the first few times, i figured ppl living in LA are more sensitive to calories and somehow justify the indulgence of cream cheese by thinning it out and stirring air into it, but still... does no one in this crazy town like their cream cheese thick and rich, the way i do?

i've never found cream cheese, or any dairy product for that matter, particularly appetizing in its whipped and airy manifestations. i thought the idea of air in my dairy was ridiculous, unsatiating, and a little gross. i want more bang in my bite, you know?

nevertheless, that's all i see being served up in LA, and this weekend, without realizing the symbolic significance, i opted for a tub of whipped honey nut cream cheese at the grocery store. i ate it this morning, spread thick on a piece of toast with sliced bananas.

i wonder if slowly all these little changes will make me a (reluctant) Angelino after all.

trickery!
-stephan!e

saturdays

saturdays in LA have been devoted to sleeping in, waking up on my own at 6:20 despite turning the alarm off, and going back to bed to have feverish and jarring dreams. this week's sampling:

my friend's boyfriend, who i've just met and who my friend is very pleased with, turns out to be stalking me. i find his fan page on the internet, a photoessay in which he posted pictures of me at a party in the park, my mom, aunt, and grandma (all the ladies in my family) lined up in front of a stage where a band is playing, and we are dancing. the boyfriend analyzes my expressions, my hair, my muscle tone and writes this justification for his fascination:

"she has the body of a man but exudes the allure of feminine sexuality, which proves she is the birthmother"

in this context, "birthmother" means that i am the mother of the earth.

in a conjoining dream, i pick the lids off of two garbage cans and strap them to my arms and flap my way to the sky. i am flying between steeples and hovering by the windows of tall buildings, landing on rafters of coffee shops and spying on bad guys plotting to hurt people. i'm still in LA, but it's a New England version of LA, and there are tall old trees which i like to perch in, since i can fly and all.