Life in LA

Home

I'm in Chicago again.

Life continues to be strange these days. Life continues to smack of impermanence, each day leading into another transition, the great ebb and flow of change.

Flying into O'Hare yesterday I said to myself in my head, I'm home. Just kind of trying it out. It's not really my home yet. But Los Angeles is beginning to feel less and less like home to me.

So if Chicago's not my home yet and Los Angeles is no longer my home, where does that leave me?

It leaves me back to trying to stay present. A place I wish I had never left but one that's easy to get lost from.

It leaves me finding home to be wherever I am at any given moment. Home becomes my back right now, sticky against a wooden chair in an apartment in Lakeview. Home becomes my solitary walks through this new big city, a hundred things I've never seen before on every block. Home is the view out an airplane window of the snowcapped Rocky Mountains. Home is my deck in my little apartment in Venice that I will soon leave. Home is someone else's pillow under my head, different but no less comfortable than my own.

So much of my life right now hinges on the future. I'm still waiting to hear about my book. I'm waiting to hear back about jobs I'm applying for here in Chicago. I'm waiting to get out of the lease on my car, to start packing up my apartment in Los Angeles. I'm waiting to have that last dinner or drink with this friend or that one. I'm waiting to drive my rental truck into Chicago and unpack my things into my new aparmtment. I'm waiting to say I'm home, and mean it.

But for now home is simply the hot, humid breeze through the window, the view of a street corner that's becoming more and more familiar.

Holding it Together

It's late.

I spent the evening at Largo with friends for an 826LA event. A nice night...old friends and regular ones, the strange and cozy atmosphere of the club. Driving through Hollywood on this, a warm summer night in Southern California, felt so familiar. I've been here for a long time it feels like all of a sudden.

These last few weeks since cementing my decision to move to Chicago have been hard. I've been a little stressed and sad, and at times, forgetting to concentrate on the bright future that awaits me in that new city.

I haven't moved in a long time. I remember when I left New York. I never thought I would leave New York and I never thought I would live in Los Angeles. But I did and life went on in the most wonderful and heartbbreaking ways possible...as it always does and always will.

And I remember my first summers here in Los Angeles and in New York, adjusting to the light and the way the air moved through those then foreign streets.

My first summer in Manhattan I stayed up until dawn every morning watching the light break across the Chrysler building in the distance. I had just turned twenty. I was thin and girlish, curled into a corner of the couch with my journal and a cigarette, my future at my fingertips.

In the afternoons I walked the streets, shying away from the bums and the roaring garbage trucks. I looked for work, pullling open the heavy steel doors of trendy clubs where I offered my pathetic resume in hopes of securing a cocktail waitressing position.

When the heat grew too intense I'd head back to 5th Street and lean against the stoop across the street from my apartment building talking to this old character named Ed. He'd lived on 5th street his whole life. He was in his late sixties, always shirtless, always wearing an old pair of blue jean cut-offs, and a plastic pearl necklace. I'd prop my elbows back against the concrete steps of the stoop and we'd smoke cigarettes and I'd give him the latest report on my job hunt.

I felt so heavy those days, couldn't see what lay beyond. When it grew later I'd meet M at the bar on our street and we'd drink cold pints of Bass and play pinball with our laundry quarters until we were drunk and quiet.

And then fall came and with it, that delicious cool air. I got a job and suddenly life picked up in a whirlwind...school and new friends, work and cash in my pocket. Before long I could hardly remember what it was like to have an afternoon free to hang out with Ed.

And then suddenly four years had passed and I was in a moving truck, driving through the darkness of the Holland Tunnel and up into the light of a new city and new life.

The same is true for Los Angeles, my time here slow to start and now gone by in a whirlwind of amazing people and adventures.

Next, Chicago. I'm ready. I want it. I just have to get there.

Saying Goodbye

I spent the day sailing with friends through the Channel Islands.

I woke up early and drove up the PCH, sipping coffee out of a thermos and admiring the surfers sitting out on the early glass of the ocean and then met my friends in the marina where we loaded up the boat and set sail for Anacapa.

It was gorgeous out on the ocean, dolphins swimming alongside the boat, the sound of the sails in the wind. We dropped anchor off the coast of Anacapa and sat in the sun eating cheese and crackers and smoked salmon and chocolate and drinking wine. The boat swayed beneath us and the ropes made that lovely tugging sound.

After lunch we took turns jumping off the bow into the great swelling Pacific where I floated on my back, looking up at the sky and the rocky island behind me. I thought about my life a lot today. I thought about all the things I've done, the places I've been, the experiences I've had, and how grateful I am for it all.

I've ridden elephants in Thailand and I've swum with dolphins in Honduras. I've smoothed my fingertips along the underbellies of a giant stingrays in Grand Cayman and I've kayaked down an underground river in Mexico. I've been to Stonehenge and I've listened the way the rocks tumble against the shoreline in Sicily. I've looked at the stars from the top of a mountain in Wyoming and I've leaned drunkenly over a balcony in New Orleans. I've walked along a deserted island off the coast of Maine and I've hiked through a mangrove forest in the Philippines.

I thought about all of these places I've been so privileged to have been as I lay on my back in the sun on the bow of this beautiful sailboat. I felt so amazed by these lives we are alotted, our time here, the places we go and the experiences we have. And I felt particularly cognizant of the incredible things I've been able to do. I know not everyone can write that list above and I always want to remain respectful and grateful for the opportunities I've had in my life so far.

I drove home at sunset, winding around the PCH, the sun setting into the ocean behind me. I cried thinking about this time I've spent in California, these last five years, everything that it has been, good and bad. I cried thinking about the end of this time, the closing of this chapter, that I will never again be 29 years old and driving alone down the PCH, my skin sticky in the salt air.

By the time I reached Santa Monica it was dark and it had just begun to rain. On my way into Venice another driver didn't see me in his blind spot and merged into my lane, smashing his car into mine. We stood out in the street in the rain, exchanging information, and I felt my body sag with exhaustion. I didn't cry though. It wasn't like the last time I got in a car accident.

This time I came home and drew myself a hot bath, my body still chilled from the boat, and I sank into the scalding water, lavender steam rising up around me, and I closed my eyes and I could feel the sway of the boat still, rocking me back and forth.

Afterwards, wrapped in my towel, I strectched across my bed, the heat from the bath pulsing through my body, and I listened to the sound of rain outside, the smell of the ocean cool through the windows.

The Waiting

Last night I dreamt that I was in a huge publishing house looking for an agent who is reading my book. There were long hardwood tables and tons of people, agents and publishers, all sitting around reading manuscripts, papers spread around EVERYWHERE. I was intimidated but I also loved it. In the dream I remember thinking, I want to sit at a table all day and read! I could work here!

Ugh. It's definitely scary to have my book out there right now. As we speak it's being read by people in New York.

This is the scary part of the process. This waiting, the uncertainty, the great unknowable future. I'm much more afraid of rejection than I was when I was sending out my book proposal a few years ago. If I get rejected now, it's a rejection of the entire book that I've written. And it's also kind of a rejection of an experience I've had.

Last night my neighbor Rhonda said that if I get rejections I'm only allowed to freak out or be sad for five minutes. After that I have to pull it together and keep going. She asked me if I'd seen some list of President Lincoln's failures and went on to describe how this list shows that he failed at some pretty major stuff—was defeated in a lot political races, etc—but that he still went on to become the great man he was.

It's kind of corny but it really made me feel better. So, okay. I promise to only be sad for five minutes if I get rejected. Then I'll just keep going.

My Time in California

It was strange to come home yesterday. Suddenly everything feels like the last time I'll do something.

I flew into Long Beach airport from Chicago and as I walked down the steps from the plane, out onto the tarmac, I breathed in the cool California air. I had my sunglasses on already because there were tears slipping down my cheeks. I remembered, as I always do when I fly into Long Beach, how it used to feel to get off the plane from New York, palm fronds shimmering in the breeze, my father waiting for me in the car outside of baggage claim. Flying into Long Beach I always think about him and about my frequent visits to see him when he lived here and I lived in Manhattan.

He was always so excited to pick me up, calling me on my cell phone while I waited at baggage claim to let me know that he was circling. I'd throw my bag in the backseat and hop in next to him in the front and he'd grin at me, Hey Kiddo, and off we'd go.

My time in California has always been about my father. Even though he was only alive for one of the five years I've been here, so much of my time here has been about him, because of him. I never would have left Manhattan, never would have moved to Los Angeles, had my father not been sick and living here. And there were so many times I almost returned to the East coast after he was gone. Always something coming up to keep me here.

But the truth is, California always seemed like a memory.

No matter how rooted I became here, no matter how many friends I made or how cool of a job I found, there was always part of me that knew I wouldn't be here forever. So many times I would find myself doing something and, even as I was doing it—running down the beach, streaming along the 10 freeway toward downtown, winding up through the Hollywood hills—I was already imagining how that moment would feel as a memory.

In those moments, the impossibly blue sky curving open over the city, I felt as though I was living a memory. I could easier imagine being somewhere else, standing at a kitchen sink late one night after a dinner party in a different house, on a different coast, and remembering the very moment I was living.

That's the way California has always felt to me.

And that's not to say that it's going to be easy to walk away from all of this. From the light and the cool ocean air pushing through the screens as I type these words.

It's to say that it feels right. And that when I'm standing at my kitchen sink in my little apartment in Chicago, my hands warm and soapy, the slick porcelain of a dish between my fingers, this moment, the palm fronds and the soft air, will feel just as they always did.

Leaving Los Angeles

It's raining as I write this, the cars going by outside the window spraying water up from underneath their tires. It's a familiar sound, but one I haven't heard in a long time.

I'm in Chicago. I signed a lease on an apartment here yesterday. I'm moving here in six weeks.

I'm leaving Los Angles.

It feels strange to write that. A whole new chapter of my life is about to begin.

I've been in LA for five years. I've been living in my little house on the canals for four. I'm going to miss it. I'm going to miss the light and the air and the ocean breeze pushing through the screens at night. I'm going to miss the quiet canals and the ducks and the honeysuckle bushes. I'm going to miss the great swelling Pacific ocean.

But it's time for me to move on. I'm ready to live in another big city. From Atlanta to New York to Los Angeles to Chicago. And I love it here. I love the buildings and the neighborhoods, the trees and the dots of rain on the screen. I love my new aparment in its old ivy-covered building and I love the great swelling lake.

This is huge though. I'm excited and scared, nostaligic and hopeful, and I have much, much more to say about all of this.

Swimming with Sharks

I have a new piece up on The Nervous Breakdown about diving with sharks in the Philippines:

Swimming with Thresher Sharks Seems Like the Obvious Choice When You Decide to Give Yourself Up to the World

Repose

Well, I'm home from a lovely visit to Cape Cod.

It rained most of the time I was there, which I actually loved. I woke up around dawn one morning and found myself staring for long minutes out the window at the rain dripping through the rose bushes outside, the sky was silvery grey shimmer beyond the trees, and my breath caught for a moment. I haven't been home in a long time, I suddenly thought.

And realized that home meant the East coast. That home meant summers and rain and water-soaked rose petals on the window sill.

I'm in an interesting place in my life right now, on the verge of so much. My book is finished. My graduate program complete.

Yet here I am still, doors open wide to the deck, the cool ocean breeze pushing through the screens.

Knowing, knowing, knowing that everything is about to change.

Closure

Wow, thanks to everyone for such enthusiastic comments and emails!

I really can hardly believe that I'm finished. It happened so quickly. I feel like I could have gone on writing every day for a year. It's been absolutely delicious.

But the book is really done and I couldn't be happier about it. It was kind of shocking at first to be done...but over the last couple of days it's really begun to settle over me.

And now I'm thrilled. It was exactly three months ago that I decided to quit my job and write this book. I remember how scared I was....well, exhilarated and scared...but just remember feeling like, "Claire, you CAN'T fuck this up. You can't quit your job to write a book and then not write the book."

But I really did it! I wrote the book!

Four people have read it in its entirety and they all loved it. Granted they're friends of mine but that also means I can count on them to tell me if it's terrible...and they promised that they think it's really good. My friend Kristen just gushed about it tonight when I ran into her at the clinic. It was amazing to hear—she's talking about my book!

I went for this amazing swim in the ocean by myself after I knew it was truly finished and I floated on my back in the cold swelling Pacific and I knew that I was doing exactly what I had always wanted to be doing with my life.

I'll be on Cape Cod for the rest of the week with family and I'm looking forward to getting a little distance and a little closure on this monumental time in my life.

Thank you again to all of you who have been so supportive and encouraging throughout this process. It's meant so much.

I Finished My Book

I can hardly believe I'm writing this:

I just finished my book.

Well, the first draft of it.

It's 290 pages, 55K words. I wrote it in ten weeks.

I finished Section Three yesterday. It was sudden and unexpected and left me in a heap under my desk.

But then I gathered myself up and went for a walk on the beach, the warm green Pacific swirling around my calves.

And this morning I got up and did all the things I always do. I made the bed and came out into the living room. I opened the blinds and the doors wide to the sparkling morning. I made coffee and then I sat down at my desk and I read through everything I've written in the last ten weeks.

And it was good.

I wrote a book.

My book.

I can hardly believe it.