Author Archive for Meagan

I just ate the jalapeno pop­pers from jack-in-the-box for the first time and I guess i’m ashamed to say that they were awesome.

it’s a trou­bled sub­ject: americanism.

On one hand, I’m an amer­i­can, through and through. I was born in amer­ica to a set of par­ents that were born in amer­ica by par­ents who are deeply amer­i­can. I have a lin­eage defined by mildly west­ward migrat­ing state bound­aries and an iden­tity marked by incu­bated, state-specific ter­ri­to­r­ial ten­den­cies. My pride stems from my birth­place, a spe­cific lit­tle nook of amer­ica that is built on native amer­i­can reser­va­tions and a pop­u­la­tion dom­i­nated by non-english speak­ers and yet my matri­lin­eal palate includes things like jello salad boast­ing the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents: lime jello, wal­nuts, cot­tage cheese, and canned madarin oranges.

What the fuck?

This is not a new con­cept: amer­i­can guilt.

And so, I strive to edu­cate myself in the ways of non-public his­to­ries. Right now, I feel like i am deep into some­thing with these jalapeno pop­pers (and, another con­fes­sion: mac­a­roni bites). Who eats this stuff!? I’m hon­estly get­ting an over­whelm­ing sense of con­nec­tion with a greater pop­u­la­tion. Fast food does not discriminate.

I guess that’s the problem.

I’ve had a bit of prac­tice with grieving.

Over the course of my twenty five years of life, I have expe­ri­enced the loss of three grand­par­ents, one aunt, one uncle, one brother, three friends, a dog and two cats. And those are just the deaths imme­di­ate to me — while it may not be directly inti­mate, we tend to feel deeply when our friends expe­ri­ence death in their own fam­i­lies. Also, it is not uncom­mon to be greatly impacted by the death of a celebrity or impor­tant pub­lic figure.

I guess it might seem strange to be quan­ti­fy­ing things like this; count­ing deaths like keep­ing score. But the thing is that I think about death and grief like I think about com­mut­ing to work. It’s sec­ond nature. It’s a part of what I do each day.

At first, after the sui­cide of my brother Michael (he was 21, I was 18 at the time. He pur­chased a hand gun from an Albu­querque pawn shop and shot him­self that same day), I felt a bit like this guy —————————>

Exis­tence became totally stun­ning. Tra­vers­ing through time and space, I was ill-equipped and the bat­tery in my emo­tional head­lamp kept fritz­ing out. I was a soli­tary nomad in a cave full of reflec­tive planes that offered lit­tle in the way of nour­ish­ment or direction.

I am writ­ing this now just after the seven year mark of that event has come and gone and I no longer feel like I’m tromp­ing around on scary shards of supris­ingly organic materials.

Now, it’s a bit more like this. ————————>

I know this place. It is a part of my famil­iar scenery and I have mem­o­ries and sen­sa­tions asso­ci­ated with it that I can call up or be sur­prised by. I can come here when­ever I need to. I can make full cir­cles for as long as I want, so long as I am mind­ful of other trav­el­ers, or I can splay off in what­ever direc­tion I choose. It’s real.

I read a great book for a class at UCLA exten­sion. Here’s a few thoughts on it:

In The Reluc­tant Metrop­o­lis: The Pol­i­tics of Urban Growth in Los Ange­les, William Ful­ton describes the growth of Los Ange­les as a kind of run-away train being engi­neered by a diverse cadre of politi­cians, real-estate devel­op­ers, prop­erty own­ers, cit­i­zens, and activists. To Ful­ton, this “growth machine” seems to take on a life of it’s own, which ulti­mately dri­ves the peo­ple who inhabit the region to escape from the real­ity of the mega­lopo­lis to splin­tered sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hoods. Ful­ton advo­cates, admirably, poet­i­cally and con­vinc­ingly, for a new trans­for­ma­tion of an age-old sen­ti­ment: com­mu­nity.
Through a jour­nal­is­tic lens and a strong com­mand of lan­guage, Ful­ton paints a vivid pic­ture of the process — a strange and inef­fi­cient one to an out­sider — that sur­rounds regional plan­ning and devel­op­ment in Los Ange­les. It is a sys­tem of oppos­ing sides. Still, whether he fully believes in it or not, Full­ton also shows what is so essen­tially impor­tant about nego­ti­at­ing deals for the ben­e­fit of social and devel­op­men­tal progress, even if attempts at com­pro­mise leave some unhappy.
Nowhere is this clearer than at Jor­dan and Ahman­son Ranch, Ful­ton describes the ten­sion between the tract home envi­ron­men­tal­ists, a young and moti­vated politi­cian Maria VaderKolk, and equally moti­vated devel­op­ers engaged in an ongo­ing bat­tle to pur­chase a large plot of land from Bob Hope.
Elected into office by a slim mar­gin of votes and strong back­ing from the local envi­ron­men­tal­ists, Maria Van­derKolk, then 28 years old, hopped onto amov­ing train, with the sup­port and votes of the envi­ron­men­tal­ists, already headed toward decid­ing the fate of Jor­dan Ranch. Her job was to save it. And she did. By propos­ing the devel­op­ers move their project to a dif­fer­ent site, Van­derKolk man­aged to directly influ­ence the suc­cess­ful sale of Jor­dan Ranch by Bob Hope to the Park Ser­vice.
Unfor­tu­nately, for the tract home envi­ron­men­tal­ists, Van­derKolk had appar­ently missed the point. Ful­ton writes:
“There was no ques­tion that Mary Weis­brock and her fel­low eco-activists wanted Jor­dan Ranch saved. But giv­ing the eco-activists what they said they wanted wasn’t enough. That was what Maria Van­derKolk didn’t under­stand, hav­ing grown up in Col­orado instead of Cal­abasas. Sav­ing Jor­dan wasn’t a goal; it was a sym­bol, a metaphor for keep­ing the growth machine out.“
I was not raised in Cal­abasas either. But, hav­ing seen even just the edge of Ahman­son Ranch, with its nearly 3,000 acres of oak savanna acces­si­ble to the pub­lic, I would argue that it’s a hugely impres­sive sym­bol of coop­er­a­tion (will­ing or not) for the entire Los Ange­les region. And, though I cer­tainly sym­pa­thize with the envi­ron­men­tal­ists, who’s vision was not real­ized in the man­ner they might have hoped, “deal­ing” with the devel­op­ers is what ulti­mately saved the open space.
Addi­tion­ally, with more expan­sion of the area’s tran­sit to trails ser­vices, every Ange­leno will have can have an oppor­tu­nity to look into a vast and open expanse of Cal­i­for­nia ter­ri­tory and imag­ine space enough for their own visions or hopes and dreams. That’s a pretty good deal. (I’m going out there in a cou­ple weeks and hope to wit­ness the hill­sides ablaze with bloom­ing wild­flow­ers)
It is hard to imag­ine what, beyond thou­sands of acres of beau­ti­ful wilder­ness to enjoy and share with pride, might encour­age the peo­ple of Cal­abasas to reex­am­ine their idea of cit­i­zen­ship and com­mu­nity with those who par­tic­i­pated in engi­neer­ing that real­ity.
Nei­ther Ful­ton nor myself have imme­di­ate sug­ges­tions for rem­e­dy­ing that dynamic.
How­ever, it is no secret where his admi­ra­tion lies, par­tic­u­larly look­ing at his recount­ing and analy­sis of the Renters’ Rights group’s suc­cess in Santa Mon­ica. There. much like Maria VanderKolk’s entrance into local pol­i­tics, orga­nized last minute by a spe­cific block of vot­ers, the Santa Mon­ica exam­ple seems uniquely ‘LA.‘
Ful­ton por­trays the results of the Santa Mon­ica City Coun­cil elec­tion in 1981, say­ing, “Renters’ Rights forces swept to power with a solid vic­tory for their entire slate…” Vehe­mently opposed to the con­struc­tion of a new office build­ing by Wel­ton Becket, the Renters’ Rights group had seri­ous sway over the Santa Mon­ica City Coun­cil, but the city had come to a stand­still, want­ing to remain aligned with their con­stituents but not want­ing to lose the poten­tial rev­enue.
Enter the deal-maker, this time Den­nis Zane. Zane went to the table with N. David O’Malley, pres­i­dent of Wel­ton Becket, and man­aged to reach a com­pro­mise that ensured access to more afford­able hous­ing, though not with­out his fair share of dis­sat­is­fac­tion.
“Hard-line rent con­trol orga­niz­ers were dis­mayed at Zane’s con­cil­ia­tory atti­tude toward Becket. The task­force mem­bers felt sold down the river, and Gol­day refused to vote in favor of the deal. But,…despite Goldway’s resis­tance, it was a remark­able achieve­ment. The Renters’ Rights group had stared down the growth machine and got­ten what it wanted.“
The momen­tum stirred in Santa Mon­ica had a wide­spread affect on the sur­round­ing parts of the region, lead­ing to some widely adopted polit­i­cal strate­gies and other vic­to­ries. How­ever, oppos­ing the growth machine has not always taken the same form, or always been suc­cess­ful.
In the wake of the 1992 South Cen­tral riots, the national media made the “Re-growth machine” an attrac­tive project for politi­cians and devel­op­ers alike.
The Inter­state Bank tower on Ver­mont and 81st Street was borne from a pub­lic con­test to design a 130-unit struc­ture in the heart of South Cen­tral (aka: the Projects). The pro­posed con­struc­tion was hotly con­tested by fel­low coun­cil mem­bers; Mark Ridley-Thomas sup­ported the project while Max­ine Waters opposed it. Ulti­mately, Ridley-Thomas won out and the city approved the con­struc­tion. That is, until Richard Rior­dan, then mayor, decided to get involved. Ful­ton writes:
“Dra­mat­i­cally, Rior­dan invited reporters to sit in on the forty-five-minute meet­ing while he lis­tened to home­own­ers’ com­plaints. Asked by one of the reporters what he was going to do, he answered “I’m going to make up my mind in the next ten sec­onds.” Then he pulled out a veto let­ter and signed it, while the home­own­ers applauded.“
This pseudo deal break­ing did not last long before Rior­dan caved under pres­sure orga­nized by Ridley-Thomas. The project ulti­mately went for­ward.
This is not to say, how­ever, that South Cen­tral did not ben­e­fit in real ways from other, more appro­pri­ately guided efforts to rebuild the com­mu­nity. There were con­sis­tent and ongo­ing suc­cesses brought about both with and with­out city sup­port. Ful­ton says:
“In the end, South Cen­tral can’t be brought back until every­one lays some kind of claim to it–not to fur­ther their own polit­i­cal ends, but because they see the fate of these neigh­bor­hoods as inex­tri­ca­bly tied to the fate of their own neigh­bor­hoods.“
This is the re-indoctrination, or re-absorption, of the sen­ti­ment of com­mu­nity that Ful­ton con­cludes as nec­es­sary to Los Ange­les’ future. Fulton’s advo­cacy for an emo­tional and sym­bolic kind of wide­spread invest­ment in South Cen­tral is echoed through­out the book and explic­itly as he closes the book by say­ing, “Pri­vacy, self-reliance, choice-all these can and must remain core Amer­i­can val­ues. Yet, so too must we remem­ber that other core Amer­i­can value, the value of com­mu­nity.” It is impor­tant to note here, to use the par­lance of our times, that a suc­cess­ful com­mu­nity is one that can sus­tain itself and the health, safety and well being of all of its mem­bers.
Tak­ing Fulton’s urgent advo­cacy to heart, Reluc­tant Metrop­o­lis will serve as an impor­tant ref­er­ence for me per­son­ally. The kinds of cre­ative part­ner­ships Ful­ton describes as suc­cesses are the prac­tice exam­ples we should seek to expand and build from.

I met a guy last night who’s name I can’t remem­ber because he was intro­duced by his nick­name which is some­thing like “wan­leed” or “man­screed” or some­thing. I couldn’t really tell if he was into the nick­name or not and so I just left the space in my head where his name would go open to other pos­si­bil­i­ties. He had a lovely hair­cut. He ate mac­a­roni and cheese with hot sauce and drank his own bot­tle of red wine. I had a bot­tle of white with a dap­per horse­man on the label. We sat at the bar with an extra stool between us and remarked that restau­rants should install arm­rests between each seat, like the secret uphol­stered things that fold down in the back­seats of most full-size sedans.

We talked about the cool pos­si­bil­i­ties of min­i­mal­ist blogging:

Mon­day
I’m up.
Did not make bed.

Tues­day
Got up.
Fell asleep mak­ing bed.
Got up.
Did not fin­ish mak­ing bed.

Wednes­day
I’m up.
Did not make bed.

Thurs­day
Got sec­ond job so i can hire maid to make bed.

I went home think­ing about clean sheets, nam­ing con­ven­tions, and cheese plates.

Holy Schneyekies!

Life is cer­tainly a ram­bunc­tious, slob­ber­ing beast, isn’t it!?

I’ve been feel­ing a bit like this lately:

I’m zoom­ing out into god-knows-where-i’m-going ter­ri­tory and today I can’t believe i’m still hang­ing on.

My first few years in Cal­i­for­nia, I was blindly in love with LA, even more in love with San Fran­cisco, and sub­con­sciously over­taken by the shapes of the trees and the extreme vari­ety of veg­e­ta­tion abound. My notion of this LA LA city was so smally small small. I still have no idea how big it is but, i assure you, it is BIG. I’ve been so over­whelmed with the larger con­text that this week­end, when I had a moment to dis­mount the mat­ted and loyal back of my steed ‘Momen­tum’ I found myself think­ing about the ben­e­fits of small.

There is a lit­tle part of me that really pines for the sim­ple con­fines of a shared dor­mi­tory room with every­thing imme­di­ately at hand and no where to really go. Some­thing as banal as a couch picked up off of the curb had huge pow­ers to change every­thing. Ta-da! a hang-out zone, a nap-zone, a make-out zone, a homey zone, a break­fast zone, a study zone. Markedly dif­fer­ent, of course, than the zone in which one accrued what lit­tle sleep there was steal. The tiny, self-sufficient space with mini-fridge and microwave known as ‘kitchen nook’ was ‘win­dow seat’ (6inch sill) adja­cent and the desk was a built-in unit com­bined with a set of draw­ers. And yet it was amaz­ing how much stuff a per­son could col­lect and store in such a tiny space. ‘stuff’ being the oper­a­tive word dri­ving the human fas­ci­na­tion to col­lect ran­dom bits and pieces of every­thing they expe­ri­ence and to bring them back ‘home’.

most trees that are more than 500 years old are hol­low. i think if most peo­ple ever had the chance to sit down inside of a tow­er­ing veg­e­ta­tive beast, they might not want to leave. ‘stuff’ might seem silly in the face of such a thing.

I got an email from the mate i shared that dorm with say­ing that she had “just moved into a room thats 94by94inches, built a loft fort and painted it orange. home.” Sounds like the right idea. Maybe I’ll build a fort with the sofa cush­ions next week­end. or go to the park with a tarp and some sticks.