Kate Jayne: Journal

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke and a presumption that once our eyes watered."
- Tom Stoppard

This wee series of blogs features quotes from the "Baci" ("Kisses") candy. Sometimes I really like them (though not half as much as trying to pronounce them in Portuguese) and so I jot them down to remember. Then every once in a while, I post them here. "Dillo con un bacio" means "Say it with a kiss," and it's their slogan/catchphrase.

Quei guramenti, quei profumi, quei baci infiniti, rinaceranno.
Those promises, those perfumes, those infinite kisses, will all be born again.
-C. Baudelaire

Come ti vidi m'innamorai. E tu sorridi perché lo sai.
I loved you at first sight. And you smile because you know it.
- A. Boito

La passione tinge dei propri colori tutto ciò che tocca.
Passion colors everything it touches.
-B. Gracian

A che più amiamo, meno dire sappiamo.
We know the least about those we love the most.
-Proverbio Cinese

As you can imagine, I've hit all the big museums in Florence. Several times, in fact - the Uffizi, the Accademia (where the original David is), Palazzo Vecchio and Pitti, the Bargello, the Medici Chapel... there's an absurd amount of art in the city, and I haven't even mentioned the churches. But there's one museum that is rarely mentioned in the guidebooks. It's located on one of the major streets that spin off the Duomo like spokes from a mammoth, beautiful, engineering marvel of a wheel. It's called "il Museo Criminale" (the Criminal Museum/Museum of Crime), though to be honest, this is a misleading name. It's really a Serial Killer Museum. And yes, I've been here too.

I'm trying to remember when I went, actually. The trips blend together a little, but I know it was either Oct/Nov 2007 or February 2008. Funny that I can remember the whole rest of the day and yet nothing sticks out to confirm the month. A friend of mine was visiting from elsewhere in Italy, and I decided it would be a fun activity for us. Er, sort of. Maybe fun is the wrong word.

We ducked in off the street, into an unassuming entrance (except for the small, creepy banner advertising the serial killer exhibit over the door - but it's very easy to miss). We paid the fee, which included a complimentary (and required, I got the sense) audio guide - mine in English, his in Italian. I've never actually used an audio guide in a museum, ever, but I assume this one worked like them all; every "display" had a number, and the track directed you from one to the next, where the disembodied voice educated you in the language of your choice. Although instead of explanations of Renaissance painting techniques, it was killing techniques; instead of descriptions of subjects, it was victims. Long paragraphs on the lives of these excruciatingly disturbed individuals, including their childhoods, killing sprees, and trials (if there were any). Oh, and the background was filled with sounds of torture: clanging, screaming, groaning, ripping.

What constituted these displays, you ask? Each gentleman was represented by a life-size wax sculpture, featured in his own environment (with knickknacks that were significant in his story), and lit up against the black walls in the dark room. Ted Bundy looked dapper and decidedly nonthreatening leaning against his car (how do you think he tricked all those girls into going anywhere with him?), and Ed Gein (that momma's boy who provided the inspiration for both Norman Bates of Psycho and Buffalo Bill of Silence of the Lambs) sat hard at work sewing his woman-outfit. Jack the Ripper had the fewest details, because of course no one knows much about him, just a cloaked figure standing over the body of a prostitute in a London alley, wielding a bloody knife. (Oh, and there were many more, I'm just giving you a few examples. There were also very interesting and educational explanations of crime scene science and a death penalty room where you could see capital-punishment tools up close.)

It was terrifying. The information was horrifying, of course, albeit shamefully fascinating at the same time. But for me it was particularly scary, in addition to being nauseating. You may not know this about me, but I am severely freaked out by fake-humans, including wax figures (but also mannequins, etc). I feel like they're going to grab me. The experience of being near them, especially when my back is turned, is like waiting for the bad guy to jump out in the movie - every second filled with progressively more fear and suspense. Except I'm in the movie. With the sound isolation from the torture track in my ears (I wouldn't even be able to hear them lunging at me, no warning whatsoever) adding to my jumpiness, my blood pressure was pretty high.

On top of everything, my friend's audio guide kept getting screwed up and he would have to go back to the entrance for help, leaving me alone with the killers (did I mention we were the only ones there?). Each time, I tried to position myself in a place where none of them could reach me, were they to make any sudden movements, and stood clutching my arms and not breathing. I suppose I should have felt safest by the John Wayne Gacy Jr exhibit, as I wasn't exactly his taste (he preferred boys, of course - though this was little consolation with Bundy at my back), but his was the most creepy of them all. He was in a prime corner spot, with the most elaborate display. It was a replica of his living room, with furniture and family photos. He was standing waist deep in the floor, with his full clown outfit on (did I mention I'm also really freaked out by clowns? - I mean, what normal person isn't?), and the room was set up as a cross-section, so you could see his feet below in the dirt under the house, along with the skeletons of his victims.

I'm writing about this because someone sent me this link for Sufjan Stevens' song "John Wayne Gacy Jr", from his "Illinois" album, and it made me think of that day. The song is beautiful, and chilling, and lovely, and creepy. Here's the video:

So, my summer fling and I have made up. In recent weeks, the Los Angeles night had taken on a definite bite, a bit of a chill, and I quickly retreated into the strong tartan-clad arms of my fallback drink: a nice scotch. (On a side note, "I'll have a wee dram o' scotch please," is the one and only thing I can say in a Scottish accent [although obviously one of the most important things I could know]. Languages are my strong suit; accents, not so much.) My last gin and tonic was September 2nd, and I hear its keening call whenever I open my refrigerator and see the tonic water - only to get out instead the prosecco or Pellegrino (the general bubbly addiction holds strong). This afternoon, despite it still being almost chilly, I felt a strong phantom-taste of a gin and tonic, and heeded it. Which is good, as I just bought more gin not too long ago, so I really should put it to good use. Now, though, it's later, sunset as I write this, and so instead I'm heating water for tea, and watching the US/Spain Davis Cup doubles match. (That would be tennis. And no, I'm not rooting for the US. I am very unpatriotic except for gymnastics and I love the Spanish tennis players passionately.)

Lately I've been thinking a lot about Italy. By lately, I mean, the past month or so. The thoughts have been elliptical and various, spurred by several things. Firstly, the fact that I'm going back in two and a half weeks, for roughly two and a half weeks. (Didn't I mention it? Torno a Firenze!) Also, a couple of weeks ago I made a "Kate's Guide to Firenze" map for a classmate of mine who was going to be spending a few days there. Making the map and writing out information on all its locations had me marinating for hours in beautiful memories.

I've been mulling, and dwelling, as we know I am wont to do. I thought for a few days about my last days there, the hedonistic craziness of them, the sleeplessness and sadness of them. Fortunately, then I moved on, to earlier days, to wine-soaked lunches and idle afternoons, of mornings at the mercato and earnest second-language late evening conversations over pizza, more wine, and coffee.

It led me to think about a fun, funny (though ultimately unfortunate) night. It was a Friday. I was working, writing and revising like a demon on "Thirty-One," which I had broken through on Wednesday night. I can't remember what, if anything, I did for dinner, but at about 1:20am I tore myself away from the song to meet my friend and her roommate at a club down the street. (Two of the many reasons I love Italy: the fact that it's completely normal [at least in the admittedly late-night circles in which I run] for me to meet someone at that time, and also that I can just walk literally a couple hundred meters down the street to get there.) I laced up my hot pink espadrilles, foot sprain be damned, for the joys of dating a tall man are not to be discounted and always to be taken advantage of. Cheek kisses outside to my guy and his friend, and to the doorman inside, then I found my friends. As guests of the owner (I have a knack for meeting the right people) our mojitos were complimentary, and we made our way upstairs to find some comfy place to sit and engage in that most universal of communication forms: girl talk.

The roommate started telling me about a boy she liked, but who seemed scared of her and always kept his distance (to state the obvious: he wasn't Italian). She told me of their instant connection and how his subsequent flightiness made her insecure for the first time in her life - her, this gorgeous, confident woman - and how upsetting it was. Then she demonstrated how they went googly-eyed at each other when they met, gazing at me with big, beautiful doe eyes, and it made me so sad for her. I know those feelings well, and told her so. Mine was a moot example at the time, as the next minute they were complimenting me on the good looks of my man downstairs, but the crosscultural camaraderie stuck with me, and reassures me when I'm mired in the muddy frustration myself.

We didn't stay late that night, and by the end of it my rocky relationship was on the rocks again. Però, non si va in Italia per una storia tranquilla - One doesn't go to Italy to have a calm affair, sì?

Recently, about a month ago, I heard someone say, "I bruise like a peach." It was at a show, though I wasn't paying attention to the performance because, well, I was flirting with a boy (in my defense, it wasn't yet the person I had come to watch). But when the singer uttered that phrase, my ears perked right up, all the way from the back of the bar (the closest place to said boy). I had never heard it put that way, but I bruise like one too.

I bruise like a fresh, ripe peach, epically and from the slightest touch. Despite not being particularly clumsy, I'm always speckled black and blue - some big, some small, usually on my extremities and (oddly) hipbones. I even bruise from bugbites sometimes. Chalk it up to a combination of genetic sensitivity (my grandmother is the same way), a rambunctious dog, and absentmindedness (I tend to, as the expression goes, have my head in the clouds). Most of the time I don't recall where I acquire these unwanted decorations, unless the collision is particularly spectacular, or tied to a specific occassion. Those memorable bumps are always attached to the experience in my mind, and obviously serve as a physical reminder sometimes for weeks afterwards - one even warranted a song mention: if you've been to any recent shows you've heard my new-ish song "Thirty-One" which I wrote in Italy. The fourth mini-verse has a line concerning a certain bruise I gained when I went bump in the night against a table or something in a dark room (my poor knees seem to be the perfect height for smacking into tables). I like bruises (or "lividi" as they're called in Italian), I like how they look up close, but sometimes I'll catch a glimpse of my reflection and be horrified.

This year I've been pretty banged up in general, from a sprained foot in Italy to assorted burns (like when I tried to iron a dress while I was wearing it - thanks to a scar on my beautiful and beloved left hand I won't be trying that again soon) and cuts (less frequent, and infinitely more traumatic to me). Right now, I'm limping around with a knee that looks like a peach thrown against concrete, which is basically what happened. It's miserable. My other knee got off easy with just bruises, my right palm is scuffed and bandaid-ed. I feel, to put it mildly, silly. Adults aren't supposed to skin their knees! To console myself, I stayed mostly in bed yesterday with my favorite man of medicine, Dr. House, and despite mine being no mystery condition, he did make me feel better.

I know, I know, I haven't been blogging. I haven't been writing at all, actually, not even really keeping up with my emails as well as I should. It just hasn't been a writing kind of week. (I'm referring to an actual week's worth of time, eg Tuesday to Tuesday, Wednesday to Wednesday - unsure of which day I'm starting from here - not this particular workweek that started Monday.) Instead it's been a week made for dwelling.

I do dwell a lot, not necessarily more than I should, and not in the depressing regret-filled self-torture that some people partake in. I dwell more on feelings than facts, surprising myself with my true views on situations, realizing others' views on them. Well anyhow, the week has been a mixed bag, a rollercoaster, an apple, a racehorse, a teaparty...what other seemingly random and yet secretly apt metaphors can I think of?

This entry is going to be a bit piecey, a little collage-like, because I am un po' pazza oggi. I'm a bit crazy today. I went to bed at 6am and slept 3.5 hours, and inexplicably I am wide awake, albeit in a low energy kind of way.

To me, dwell sounds like a word that has something to do with underwater, like looking through lakewater, murky pondwater, surrounded by viny tresses of plants, with that hot white noise in your ears. Unlike the open ocean water, with the whole world to spread into (not to mention currents and waves and the moon's tugging tides to cleanse your thought processes and keep you renewed), dwelling keeps you stuck in that murky little pool, minnows and isolation and all. That's why you can't spend too much time on it.

So I muddled through the day, and got myself to Italian class, which completely invigorated me. Afterwards, not feeling like going home yet, and feeling a little unmoored, I defaulted to my Italian catch-all cure-all: gelato. Heartbreak, insomnia, writer's block? Nothing that a little late-night windowshopping stroll with un cono of cioccolato can't fix. And whether sto facendo la passaggiata along Rodeo Drive or Via Tornabuoni, so long as I can admire the storefronts of Ferragamo, Gucci, and Hermès I'm sure to end up happy by the end of it. Perhaps it's just some magic mix of fresh air, sugar, luxury goods, and moving your feet (remember when I said that helps the two sides of your brain work together?). Sure, it's not as heartsinging happiness-invoking as Carabinieri watching (an activity similar to birdwatching but, oh, just about a million times better that is best performed nonchalantly, unobtrusively, and with great admiration and appreciation of physique, uniform, and manliness), but sometimes it's too late at night or you're in the wrong country.

So I walked, and licked, and thought, all while enjoying the Italian craftsmanship, British tailoring, French je-ne-sais-quoi in the windows I passed. I gazed longingly at a pair of Ferragamo peep-toes and adoringly at the Gucci horsebit jewelry (with which I have a longstanding love affair). And it occurred to me, that as one gets older, things get heavier. I am young, very young, so young that it's laughable for me to comment on this. But it seems to me that you begin to carry around memories and experiences, just like a sack thrown over your shoulder, except distilled into your body, your arms and legs, coming through in the clutch of your stomach and the beat of your heart. Since I am, as previously stated, a dweller by nature, perhaps I carry more than average, more than normal, more than is healthy. It's not a matter of happy or sad, or of depression, just of awareness and memory, I guess. When you tread the same streets, I think in some ways you walk on more than pavement, you wear your own footsteps into the metaphorical dirt. I've walked along Rodeo in summer at 10pm after Italian class with the temperature pushing 90 F, and in winter in high heels and tights, filled with holiday joy at the lights and the nutcrackers and the Christmas tree and thinking oh-if-it-would-only-snow... Similarly, I've walked Tornabuoni on hustle-bustle days dodging tourists on my way to lunch in afternoons of early summer, and on patriotic mornings while sick as a dog, voiceless, on my way to breakfast in mornings of early winter, and on rainy wet nights seething after a breakup, hardly able to see the sidewalk in front of me for my ire. So what I mean to say is, we often take the same routes, physically and mentally, and I think sometimes you can see every instance overlaid like slides right in front of your eyes. To my sentimental heart, it's a nice way to see, particularly with a gelato.

The discontent of the title has been a welt stretching across seasons, at times hot and red and fresh, others faded and ancient. Lately it's been heavy, but not unbearably so.

Yesterday I wrote a new song. Well, to be specific, I finished it yesterday; I began it the night before. I realized recently that songwriting is the reason I live my entire life. This is not exaggeration or hyperbole. I'm not one of those people either who say, I was born to do this, love this person, etc etc etc...I may believe it's true (well except I think you can love many people) but I'm not incredibly fond of people who go around spouting things like that. What I mean about the songwriting is, it is only in the midst of the act of creation, right in the thick of it, that I feel whole. I don't feel imperfect, or wasteful, or unhappy in any way.

That is to say, the sturm und drang and baptism by fire that is the birthing of a new song, the hair pulling and obsessive repetitive playing and back and forth and push and pull, the small scale agony and ecstasy, is the time when I feel absolutely alive and one hundred percent whole. Perhaps the rest of the time I'm not using all of myself. So I realized, with interest and warmth, that I live the entire rest of my life for the brief spells when I am creating. (Also since the rest of my life informs my writing, and is the seed and the soil and the rain of the writing, it pleasantly lets it in on the process.)

However, this was supposed to be about this new song. Almost always, the writing process energizes me, gives me unheard of amounts of energy and peppy spirit. For this song (which is as of now still untitled), I unusually, and appropriately, wrote the last lines last. And I was writing for the rhyme, and to match the first chorus, so I sort of wrote first read later. And when I read and understood them, not only the words but who they were about, it hit me very hard. I hadn't intended on writing about this person, indeed the first part of the song had concerned someone else, and you know how I have said before that sometimes your songs know what you're feeling better than you do? (The conscious brain is very gifted at distraction/denial/repression/all that good psychoanalytical stuff.) And later you look back and say, 'Oh, right...' This was like that, but without much lag time. The realization of my inner realization of the situation was subduing, and sad. It sucked the peppiness right out of me and has left me in a funk ever since.

Songwriting leaves me particularly vulnerable to these little breakdowns. (As in the great mental/emotional breakdown of May, when I made some very unwise decisions at a very unwise time - in the hours of an initial breakthrough of a song, and no food all day - when I was also very unwisely beginning to have feelings for a man who was none the wiser.) It must be something about opening your emotional channels to plumb them for melodic facts, and thus uncovering these streams (that I imagine to be something like covered aqueducts in my mind's eye) and making it possible for lightning bolts of electricity to zap through them (they are water, after all) at incredible, startling speeds, leaving you a bit fried. I feel simultaneously filled to the brim with feeling and also spread thin by it, as if a strong breath would knock me over.

I am dwelling on these lines, and on the immense and sobering truth held within them, and I am mourning, in a way.

I did a great one-take demo of the song last night, but then I changed the third line and had to re-do it, and then I grew suddenly tired and incoherent and hadn't eaten in too long and so I stopped. I'll try to get it done today and will post it with lyrics. Right now, though, I think I'll go take a bath.

I was driving home the other night at about 330 am, and the connection from the 10 west to the 405 north was closed, so I detoured myself into Westwood, rather than take the "official" Bundy detour. I was driving up Westwood Blvd, from down low, up to the actual Village, past Olympic, Pico, Santa Monica. Strange state avenues: Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri, Massachusetts, Ohio. Bungalows, all quiet, all sleeping. Two cars going my way, one cab passing the other direction, then a pickup truck. Not many people out. Neal Casal, "Maybe California" on my ipod. I suddenly realized how much I love love love LA. Re-realized it, rather. Refreshed it. I always have loved LA, rather inexplicably and for such different reasons than the norm that it seems so strange to me when people dislike it. I love LA intuitively, almost more the LAND underneath it or something.

It had been a particularly lovely night, long and easy and relaxed and sad. I bounced around neighborhoods; Beverly Hills, south BH, Fairfax, Pico. Italian class, gelato, Largo, the King's house. Prosecco, red wine, tequila. With Largo moving, it's hit me hard, with memories and with regret that I have stayed away for a while until recently, with "too busy" being the excuse. Many things have been coming full circle for me, even as lots of new things begin, but especially this night was a kind of back-home comfort, a bittersweet settling back in to some old LA routines even as I prepare to leave in a week for Florence.

I love them the same, these cities. Los Angeles and Firenze. I loved them immediately, and I continue to love them intimately, personally, quietly, ecstatically. I'm the kind of silly person who believes somewhat in destiny and fate and meanings (my life is far too filled with epic "coincidences" and tremendous luck to believe that, for me at least, nothing happens for a reason) -- I don't believe that anyone's existence is mapped out or anything like that, but I tend to believe that in my life, certain things are meant to happen, mostly meetings. And I don't just mean with people, also with places. Same as I might have a connection with a person, I could have it with a place. Then, after I recognize that connection, it's entirely up to me what to do with it. (If with a person, it's up to them as well, of course.) Mostly just to learn something.

My affection, like a new crush, has been directed more towards Florence over the past year, though I still consider LA my home. Maybe it's just my artistic, romantic sensibilities, but they do feel like love affairs. I am spending May in Florence, my river Renaissance lover, and as usual, I'm feeling like it's not the optimal time to go. That happens when I leave either city, it never seems right to leave, but always right to arrive. On last Wednesday night, as I drove home, and the ipod moved on to Joni, I was thinking a great deal about endings and beginnings and how sometimes - nay, usually - they're the same place; how it's all about the cycles and circles and getting back to who you really are but with new knowledge and deeper understandings and how hard it can be to see when you're in it. That's why, even though it can seem so obvious from the outside, it hits you suddenly. At least for me, it's a very positive, reassuring feeling. Lots of things throw you off course, for me it's usually self-doubt brought on my overthinking, by losing touch with what's important, many times by failed love affairs, by arguments, by daily life. So discovering that you always knew what was right for you, that you knew who you were, and have been quietly growing roots and flowers all along unbeknownst even to yourself.... this is a comforting thing.

All these things I was mulling over, quietly, in the still optimism that always accompanies a drive home in the wee hours after Fun Club. So it was a particularly apt, and poignant time to be overwhelmed with affection for this sunny, seaside city.

Thus, without further pontification, I present, in no particular order except how they come into my head, 50 Things I Love About LA. (Note: there are many more things I love, but it's a start. There's also a lot of stuff that bugs me, but that's for another post.)

1. Largo
2. Night blooming flowers
3. Spanish place names
4. Canter's -- the coffee, the eggs, the parking attendants, the bakery, the waiters/waitresses, the bathrooms, the fries, the ceiling, the booths, the newspaper articles.
5. The coastline / the Pacific
6. The heat in the summer, even though it can be tortuous, when you first step into it and it immediately and in a flash warms your entire body, through and through, all your muscles and bones. Especially since parts of me are always cold otherwise.
7. The thrill of when it rains.
8. Wearing un-sensible, but beautiful shoes whenever I go out at night since I never have to walk far.
9. Bungalows in the middle of the city
10. Strolling Rodeo Dr late at night to leisurely window shop
11. Concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in late summer
12. Parallel parking perfectly (with alliteration!)
13. The Burgundy Room
14. Getting a tan in winter
15. Being in locations that famous / great songs are about.
16. That every place I have a truly terrible memory, I also have many wonderful, happy ones to offset the association.
17. That I have lived here long enough now to HAVE significant and many memories, real-life, adult ones. I don't have that anywhere else yet.
18. The 101
19. Malibu Seafood
20. Being the only car in the middle of the night on normally-busy boulevards
21. The beach. Not so much the the picture-perfect Santa Monica stretches, but the more northern, rougher ones.
22. Going downtown for concerts, operas, and plays and feeling like I'm in a "real" city with big buildings.
23. Al Gelato - especially Cappuccino Crunch and Crema flavors. Even if neither are accurate, Italian-wise.
24. Monsoon bowls
25. West Hollywood
26. The way the air smells dry. (I can't explain it, it's just that it smells really different than anywhere else.)
27. Palm trees!
28. Solar de Cahuenga
29. That there are still so many places I haven't discovered, and so many streets I haven't seen, that a simple turn off one of my regular routes can be interesting and invigorating. If you like to explore.
30. Taking boys to the Santa Monica pier and on the ferris wheel after kicking their ass at calcetto/taca-taca/fußball.
31. Great sushi
32. Italian class
33. Ice skating in Santa Monica in wintertime
34. Franklin Ave
35. The Arclight / Amoeba
36. Farmer's Markets
37. Being spoiled with amazing concerts and always being so close to my favorite musicians
38. Mexican food
39. LACMA
40. Sunset Blvd - the whole thing, not just the Strip.
41. The Cat Club
42. The big, wide streets in Beverly Hills
43. The LA Music Center downtown for productions and picnics
44. Summer nights
45. The Hollywood Hills
46. Hancock Park mini-mansions
47. Swingers - both locations
48. Wilshire Blvd
49. Donuts
50. Lastly, flying into LAX after being away and after flying over the entire country. Looking out at ocean, forest, mountains, snow, canyons, all that desert....then finally seeing the city, finding the landmarks, getting to the other ocean, and touching down.