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

SAD

---

yep, that seems just about right.

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!)

forgotten sounds

sitting on the floor in my room, brewing tea, i hear a sudden and strange sound. i can't identify its location, it seems to be coming from all around me. a weird hissing, crackling sound. at first like tv static, but it gets louder and moves around the walls.

and then it sounded like fire, burning. i looked up, to my side, where is the fire coming from??


and then i heard the tapping on the window.

i heard the gentle tapping, splattering, splashing on the glass, and then realized what i heard before was rain on my rooftop.


and i was sad because i'd apparently forgotten the sound rain makes.


and sadder still: in the time it took me to write this, the rain has stopped.

-stephanie

first snow

i meant to post this a week ago.

while my friends and family in other climes were celebrating the first snows of the winter season (making me dreadfully homesick and nostalgic), winter manifested itself quite differently here in torrid LA, where last week, the temperatures reached 94 degrees.

and, as many of you are aware by now, while most places build a fire to keep warm from the cold, LA couldn't stop its fires from growing, as Santa Ana winds swept raging fires across southern California. while blissful, serene snowflakes fell on the rooftops in my hometown, i noticed a peculiar parallel on the streets of LA.

my parents (visiting me from KY) and i were walking around last weekend, and we kept noticing white specks floating down from the sky. i thought at first that it was pollen, the trees confused by the (even by LA standards) unseasonable warmth. but, the particles were too large to be pollen, and i noticed that when you touched it (or sat in it, as my mother did when she took a break to recline on a bench), it would appear white and cloudy on yr skin and clothes. and then, we started noticing it was in the air wherever we went, that it was collecting on the tree leaves, in the cracks of sidewalk, on our clothes, on the hoods of cars.


it was vaguely reminiscent of snow, but, horrified, i realized it was quite the opposite: what we were observing was, in fact, ashes blowing in from the fires on the mountains.

it was unsettling, to say the least. and as news coverage continued throughout the last week, with many more homes being lost and no sign of ceasing, it made me miss home all the more.

relief.

last week, while i was stuck in my room with its one window that faces a wall and a tree, talking to my boyfriend, i didn't notice the clouds moving and stirring, until finally they burst into rain.

and the result flooded me with memories of home, catapulted me back in time, through all the 21 years of fall and winter rain that came before this. and even though it was cold as i stood on the deck, a blanket wrapped around my neck like a scarf, i felt warm and joyous, like a child experiencing rain for the first time. indeed, it was my first storm since i've been here, since June.

it's funny that the movies always portray rain so gloomily, when i think human beings and all animals understand it instinctively as a form of relief. or maybe it's b/c the movies take on a very Eastern/Mid-Western perspective, where rain is much more common and not appreciated in the way i do now. here in LA, the long months of sun and heat, drought and dust, were making me forget the pleasure of variance and surprise in the weather. the dust and monotony were washed away, and i could remember what it felt like to know the summer had ended, and i'd be coming home soon.


my first LA rain from stephan!e lee on Vimeo.

one thing i wish i could have captured: the smell of rain. i'm sure there's some scientific way to explain it (electron charges, changing air pressure) but i'm going to say it's the smell of comfort, of connectedness – rain splashing everything, knowing that even though i'm a whole stretch of America away from my friends and family, this is the same way they'd be experiencing a storm at home, that though i'm grown up and far from home and working my first job and living on my own for the first time in my life, i can feel like a kid again, at the drop of a splash of rain.

-stephan!e

maple leaves

"oh please God bring relief
even if it's only brief
she says that we were just make-believe
but I thought she said maple leaves...
... and when she talked about the fall
I thought she talked about the season
I never understood at all."

- Maple Leaves [mp3] by Jens Lekman.

that's me three years ago, enjoying a wallow in the leaves with friends.
this became an annual tradition for me and a few friends, oh i miss it so!
[photo credit Se4n.]

i got an email from my friend Sara tonight. she gave me an update on the goings-on back home, the activisms i've left behind, and she spoke of the leaves in the Fall and how spectacular they are. i can hardly believe it: one season spent away from home and i've already forgotten what it means to have an autumn, to feel the weather change and to trade in flip flops for boots, to bundle up and enjoy a walk with crisp leaves underfoot, the smell of summer leaving the leaves, the smell of air pressure changing and the way the woods get damper and colder and the smell of the rocks on the trails.

i miss all those things. i was just thinking about the last week of school last year. i remember one night walking out to my car, it must've been close to midnight, and the stars were out and the moon was brilliant and casting crisp light onto the treetops, and the wind was perfect, just chilly enough to justify wearing my jacket, my hands grateful for the large pockets. it was hushed and peaceful that night, unusually calm, i think finals were winding down and everyone had worn themselves out from studying or partying, or had moved home early. i remember pausing in the middle of the parking lot, craning my neck to stare at the sky, trying to remember what the immensity of that moment felt like. it was perfect. i wanted to live in that moment forever.

i miss the way weather affects my mood. in LA, i don't have good days just because of the way the sun is shining differently (because it never varies) and i don't get to appreciate the way the wind feels extra comforting one day over the rest. i miss those fall days when the weather is such a seductive companion, stealing you away from your work, abandoning work that always remains, always accumulates, to enjoy fleeting moments of sunshine and breeze.

her email made me homesick. i miss the feeling of fall. here, it gets cold enough to make me enjoy my bed's warmth, to make it harder to get up in the mornings, but when i get off from work, it's still 90 degrees out and smoggy. i want to live in a place where the seasons change.

-stef

p.s. i wrote this post with the hope that some of you could send me photos of the changing leaves. it would help me to remember home. send to free [dot] radical [dot] lee [at] gmail [dot] com. thx!

searching for home

that's my room last year, 2 or 3 days before the end of the year. i took this picture in a fleeting moment before i ran out of the room to meet friends to eat lunch at the dining hall, and something about the light that morning, the way my bed looked, the wood of the floor, the look of all my senior project books stacked up on my floor, all read, annotated, and waiting to be returned to the library, made me halt, smile while fighting back the urge to cry. it was the first really gripping moment i remember knowing i would miss moments like these, these significant pauses before a sudden leap.

---

i've been dragging my feet around my apartment in Los Angeles for the past week, remembering how happy i was just a few days ago, thinking about how funny it is, these changes in moods, the feeling of safety and completeness suddenly rushing away from me, like a parachute that won't open, just a useless backpack – dead weight.

i find myself trying to preserve some memory, some trace of a past self, a past life, a vestigial existence, in order to live thru my present. i'm collecting all the salvagable bits and pieces – the smell of the linens on my bed, the warmth of sunlight thru tree leaves coming in my window, the look of shadows on wooden floor, the smell of an old book and the feel of a hardbound in the crook of my arm as i walk around town, the tune of a Billy Bragg song i used to hum, the slight hum of a harmonica – and trying to weave them together, trying to create a home from them, some shelter for my troubled mind, some comfort to retreat to when i forget how to fall asleep at night, when i get tearful and remember that there's no one home to eat my dinner with, again.

the time in LA doesn't move. it never rains. it never gets colder, so if it weren't for the shortening days, i wouldn't know that we were heading toward december.

i feel an onsetting depression: i try to celebrate small successes – a tasty self-cooked meal, finding textbooks online for almost $100 less than bookstore price, fixing the broken printer at home, finding my keys after absent-mindedly misplacing them, crossing the street without getting hit by a car – but i find i'm pretty good at realizing when i'm trying to fool myself.

it's funny: when i would go back to school in Oxford for the fall, i would always get bouts of seasonal depression with the change in weather. the sudden cold, the lengthening nights, the accumulation of work, all would make me miss the summer and my family, and home.

but today, and yesterday, and all the many days before, i've been wondering what life in Oxford is like, missing the closeness of everything, the convenience of having 20 or so friends in walking distance, of having constant company, of never feeling alone. i miss going to class and being pleasantly surprised to bump into a friend on the way over on my bike. i miss my bike. i miss classes i enjoy. i miss having friends.

i had a post in mind when i came here, but it seems i've already written it. over a year ago, i wrote these two posts back to back and they, as reflections on my present state, echo and project my distress.

i'm listening to Billy Bragg now, and i'm pining for home.

-stephan!e

oh the irony...

when i heard that first lady Laura Bush has skin cancer, my first impulse was to kinda laugh obnoxiously at what i perceived as a burning case of irony:

the wife of our unequaled president, George Bush --whose environmental policies have proven exceedingly and increasingly laughable and ignorant, delusional, noncomittal, ineffective, and damningly negligent-- is apparently suffering one of the symptoms indicative of the impending apocalypse: squamous cell carcinoma, the 2nd most common form of skin cancer.

the skin cancer is one of many manifest risks of depleting ozone, a direct result of our government's inability to acknowledge harmful and PREVENTABLE pollution as a cause of environmental problems, and its inability to prioritize environmental protection (rather than big oil).

you'd think this personal event would make the deteriorating ozone more salient to our boy George (especially since his recent trip to the doc to get 4 sun-induced lesions removed from his face).

but sadly, the administration's wind-up monkey marches on...

hey, at least we can enjoy 50+ degree weather in december...?
-stephanie


p.s. for fun, watch this (below). my favorite part comes at 3:05. "go home and die." wow.

Bush Speech (Edited)