all of these things...
been very busy. really. really really busy with many many things, most of them small, or, if not, large and scattered enough to be divided into smallish tasks to finish, one at a time, beads on a string.
i have been, for the last while or so, working for my dad and uncle, at the furniture manufacturing company, incorporated that two of my great uncles and my great-grandfather started nearly a century ago. unless it was my great-great uncles, which, come to think of it, it could have been. i know it only as "the factory" or, when time was short, "the shop", where the entire male population on my paternal side went every day, yes every day, to build, upholster and design furniture, all the while arguing and eating off of the lunch truck. i had the pleasure of joining them some; on assorted weekend days when my mother and grandmothers were busy or had hair appointments, and later on during long teenage summers, when my mom was frustrated at my endless tv watching and sent me there to keep busy. during the younger years, i whiled away afternoons making covered buttons out of patent leather and stringing them together in bracelets and necklaces that i couldn't, literally, give away. the scraps of fabric on the floor were also always good for patchworking doll clothes, ensuring that all of my dolls, once dressed and lined up on their shelves in my room, looked like a depression-era street urchin style fashion show. in later years, my grandfather gave me "real" jobs: like cleaning out and organizing the middle room upstairs, the one with 3 walls covered in pegboard, and fabric books from assorted mills hanging on hooks. he never told me specifically how to organize it though, which meant sometimes it was by company, but other times it was by color, or subject matter (florals here, stripes there), or size, or by amount of dust they were covered in.
not enough years later, i am back, and unbelievably (or maybe entirely believably?) stationed in the same pegboard room, still putty colored, though not as dusty after three days of intense cleaning (insert apt cliche regarding things changing yet not here -- its too late for me to remember how that one goes). i am not positive sure of my exact job title yet, which is perhaps why no move has been made to make me a business card, but according to my dad i am, "in charge of fabrics. and leathers. and organizing." i know he means business (he doesn't always mean business) because he bought me a laptop (for WORK), and has, as of yet to protest regarding me staging a coup on the sample room and turning it into my office.
given the innate fear that my paternal elders have for all means of technology (my dad still can't check his cell phone voicemail), the job right now is heavy on the organizing. the putting together of line books, fabric books, leather books. the adding of fabrics and leathers, the discontinuing of the same, and the necessary alerts to the various mills, tanneries, and showrooms. the convincing of the powers that be that webpages can be really useful. the slow and plodding movement toward acceptance of the idea that it really is ok to throw some things away.
its a strange place to be, made stranger by the facts that a) i drive there at 6 in the morning, meaning that i'm usually there for 2 or 3 hours before i'm actually awake, and b) there are workers there that remember me sitting on a stool in front of the covered button maker machine, at seven years old, and c) it still smells the same, and every morning that hits me first, awake or not.
anyway, thus the large and scattered things that have kept me occupied in days past.
among the smaller:
now that i work with fabrics, and with fabrics that sometimes need discarding, a strange thing has happened: the word "discard" has come to mean "throw in the trunk of my car". which means that a not-so-small collection of fabrics and leathers have come home to live with me, with hopes and dreams of one day being a tote bag or clutch purse on sale somewhere, adorned with vintage buttons and salvaged tassels. this would not be a huge problem, except for the fact that previous to fabrics following me home, yarn followed me home, and previous to that, the aforementioned buttons, and previous to THAT, interestingly decorated papers, all in hopes of one day being something bigger and more exciting than what they came to me as. i now have no more boxes for paper, no more jars for buttons, no more bins for yarn and really really really no more shelves for fabric.
so i have made a concentrated effort to create (i think, actually, it is in response to the long hours i find myself in front of a computer at work, doing things not very creative, unless you consider typing all that stimulating), and a kind of creating that involves tools and not necessarily computers. there has been sewing and pattern designing and the knitting of small animals and smaller flowers. the time spent home has been all about keeping hand and mind from idleness.
is idleness a word?
which brings me here: to the darkened living room, past midnight on a tuesday night (good thing i have a dentist appointment and get to sleep in tomorrow - OH! there's another little thing: the total refurbishing - it feels like - of my mouth. 800 dollars worth of dental work, thankfully spread out over four appointments, tomorrow being the third, before the next cycle begins, and i refuse to inquire about the length or expense of that trial yet). the boy is sleeping, the dogs are sleeping, and i can not sleep, kept up by infernal questions regarding how i plan to get the 13 pieces of knit bear, most of which are hardly recognizable as ear, leg or face, stuffed and sewn up into something vaguely recognizable tomorrow, once i sleep off the pain shots and regain feeling in the left side of my face. i just couldn't seem to figure out how to manage, so i thought i'd give up and come out here, type and stop thinking about it. good job so far.
its probably time for me to go back in there, lull myself to the sound of one boy and three dogs snoring, and will myself asleep.
but before! some exciting news that has nothing, really to do with me, except for the fact that yes it does: the boy is working on the documentary leonardo dicaprio is putting together, the eleventh hour, and its been interesting keeping up and watching the pieces come together (look, there i am thinking about the bear again). especially exciting was saturday, when one of the composers came here. i knew his name was eric, and when he came to the door, he looked vaguely familiar, but it wasn't until an hour later when i had left the house and was half a block away, that i slapped my forehead and said, "oh my god, i know who he is!". and i called the boy and said, "look look, is he? is he?" and of course he was.
17 years ago, in the throes of teen, my mother and i hated each other, not so much for any good reason, other than she felt i was hanging out with a "bad element" and when you're in high school in los angeles, love music, and know bars that will let you in for free, that bad element is rather easy to find. she was worried about drugs and boys, two things of which i had little interest, given my quest for music and bukowski and pretending i was twenty. call it a lack of communication.
anyway, she joined one of those "tough love" parent groups (she reminded me on saturday that it was called "because i love you"), and threatened to take the door off of my bedroom. i found that unconscionable, and tried to make nice. i agreed to go with her to some say no to drugs talk that david crosby was speaking at, as long as it meant we could go to tito's tacos afterward and she would give my beloved door a second chance.
and so i trudged along with her some saturday, trying to look as much "my mom made me come here" as i could: black jeans, unruly hair, green ten hole doc martens, scowl. in the back of my head i thought that really, my mom wanted to meet david crosby and that was the only REAL reason that we were there, and how ridiculous she was for being so silly and starstruck.
and we sat down in the auditorium, and the lights went dim, and before there was david crosby there was someone else: eric avery. the name meant nothing to my mother, but i was fifteen, and enchanted by all local music, and had snuck into every local bar that would have me, and there was fucking eric avery, bassist for jane's addiction, telling me that drugs were a bad idea (a secret: i had already decided that should i ever have to marry a member of jane's addiction - good god, would that have been a fate worse than death in 1990 - eric avery was it. dave navarro wore too much makeup, steven perkins seemed kind of silly, and perry farrel, well...even at 15 i knew what i couldn't keep up with).
the adrenaline must have made me forget that i wasn't speaking to my mom, because i think i grabbed her arm and fervently stagewhispered the whole scenario. which was fine, we clutched and giggled throughout the presentation, temporarily friends again until it was over, and we were leaving and who should be outside smoking a cigarette alone, but...eric avery. and my mom, being my mom, felt inclined to go over and say hello and thank you and how enjoyable and, of all things, this is my daughter...and then, as if that circle of hell wasn't hot enough, produced from her purse her camera. and asked if she couldn't take a picture of us, me and my could-be-one-day-jane's addiction-husband, as if the day had to be recorded for some miserable kind of posterity.
which, of course, it did have to be, because it was likely all those hours in days following spent gazing at the picture til the edges were bent that enabled me to recognize him, many many years later, without the orange hair and standing in my living room: eric avery.
eric avery, with whom i later shared (some) of the story, ate pollo loco, talked about joan didion and raging bull and martin scorcese, and whats eating gilbert grape. and i watched him eat his soup and tried to remember that my boyfriend, the loving sweet smart boy, was sitting right next to him. which was a lot easier to do once i realized he was married and that i wouldn't likely be called into that kind of duty.
phew. kind of.
i have been, for the last while or so, working for my dad and uncle, at the furniture manufacturing company, incorporated that two of my great uncles and my great-grandfather started nearly a century ago. unless it was my great-great uncles, which, come to think of it, it could have been. i know it only as "the factory" or, when time was short, "the shop", where the entire male population on my paternal side went every day, yes every day, to build, upholster and design furniture, all the while arguing and eating off of the lunch truck. i had the pleasure of joining them some; on assorted weekend days when my mother and grandmothers were busy or had hair appointments, and later on during long teenage summers, when my mom was frustrated at my endless tv watching and sent me there to keep busy. during the younger years, i whiled away afternoons making covered buttons out of patent leather and stringing them together in bracelets and necklaces that i couldn't, literally, give away. the scraps of fabric on the floor were also always good for patchworking doll clothes, ensuring that all of my dolls, once dressed and lined up on their shelves in my room, looked like a depression-era street urchin style fashion show. in later years, my grandfather gave me "real" jobs: like cleaning out and organizing the middle room upstairs, the one with 3 walls covered in pegboard, and fabric books from assorted mills hanging on hooks. he never told me specifically how to organize it though, which meant sometimes it was by company, but other times it was by color, or subject matter (florals here, stripes there), or size, or by amount of dust they were covered in.
not enough years later, i am back, and unbelievably (or maybe entirely believably?) stationed in the same pegboard room, still putty colored, though not as dusty after three days of intense cleaning (insert apt cliche regarding things changing yet not here -- its too late for me to remember how that one goes). i am not positive sure of my exact job title yet, which is perhaps why no move has been made to make me a business card, but according to my dad i am, "in charge of fabrics. and leathers. and organizing." i know he means business (he doesn't always mean business) because he bought me a laptop (for WORK), and has, as of yet to protest regarding me staging a coup on the sample room and turning it into my office.
given the innate fear that my paternal elders have for all means of technology (my dad still can't check his cell phone voicemail), the job right now is heavy on the organizing. the putting together of line books, fabric books, leather books. the adding of fabrics and leathers, the discontinuing of the same, and the necessary alerts to the various mills, tanneries, and showrooms. the convincing of the powers that be that webpages can be really useful. the slow and plodding movement toward acceptance of the idea that it really is ok to throw some things away.
its a strange place to be, made stranger by the facts that a) i drive there at 6 in the morning, meaning that i'm usually there for 2 or 3 hours before i'm actually awake, and b) there are workers there that remember me sitting on a stool in front of the covered button maker machine, at seven years old, and c) it still smells the same, and every morning that hits me first, awake or not.
anyway, thus the large and scattered things that have kept me occupied in days past.
among the smaller:
now that i work with fabrics, and with fabrics that sometimes need discarding, a strange thing has happened: the word "discard" has come to mean "throw in the trunk of my car". which means that a not-so-small collection of fabrics and leathers have come home to live with me, with hopes and dreams of one day being a tote bag or clutch purse on sale somewhere, adorned with vintage buttons and salvaged tassels. this would not be a huge problem, except for the fact that previous to fabrics following me home, yarn followed me home, and previous to that, the aforementioned buttons, and previous to THAT, interestingly decorated papers, all in hopes of one day being something bigger and more exciting than what they came to me as. i now have no more boxes for paper, no more jars for buttons, no more bins for yarn and really really really no more shelves for fabric.
so i have made a concentrated effort to create (i think, actually, it is in response to the long hours i find myself in front of a computer at work, doing things not very creative, unless you consider typing all that stimulating), and a kind of creating that involves tools and not necessarily computers. there has been sewing and pattern designing and the knitting of small animals and smaller flowers. the time spent home has been all about keeping hand and mind from idleness.
is idleness a word?
which brings me here: to the darkened living room, past midnight on a tuesday night (good thing i have a dentist appointment and get to sleep in tomorrow - OH! there's another little thing: the total refurbishing - it feels like - of my mouth. 800 dollars worth of dental work, thankfully spread out over four appointments, tomorrow being the third, before the next cycle begins, and i refuse to inquire about the length or expense of that trial yet). the boy is sleeping, the dogs are sleeping, and i can not sleep, kept up by infernal questions regarding how i plan to get the 13 pieces of knit bear, most of which are hardly recognizable as ear, leg or face, stuffed and sewn up into something vaguely recognizable tomorrow, once i sleep off the pain shots and regain feeling in the left side of my face. i just couldn't seem to figure out how to manage, so i thought i'd give up and come out here, type and stop thinking about it. good job so far.
its probably time for me to go back in there, lull myself to the sound of one boy and three dogs snoring, and will myself asleep.
but before! some exciting news that has nothing, really to do with me, except for the fact that yes it does: the boy is working on the documentary leonardo dicaprio is putting together, the eleventh hour, and its been interesting keeping up and watching the pieces come together (look, there i am thinking about the bear again). especially exciting was saturday, when one of the composers came here. i knew his name was eric, and when he came to the door, he looked vaguely familiar, but it wasn't until an hour later when i had left the house and was half a block away, that i slapped my forehead and said, "oh my god, i know who he is!". and i called the boy and said, "look look, is he? is he?" and of course he was.
17 years ago, in the throes of teen, my mother and i hated each other, not so much for any good reason, other than she felt i was hanging out with a "bad element" and when you're in high school in los angeles, love music, and know bars that will let you in for free, that bad element is rather easy to find. she was worried about drugs and boys, two things of which i had little interest, given my quest for music and bukowski and pretending i was twenty. call it a lack of communication.
anyway, she joined one of those "tough love" parent groups (she reminded me on saturday that it was called "because i love you"), and threatened to take the door off of my bedroom. i found that unconscionable, and tried to make nice. i agreed to go with her to some say no to drugs talk that david crosby was speaking at, as long as it meant we could go to tito's tacos afterward and she would give my beloved door a second chance.
and so i trudged along with her some saturday, trying to look as much "my mom made me come here" as i could: black jeans, unruly hair, green ten hole doc martens, scowl. in the back of my head i thought that really, my mom wanted to meet david crosby and that was the only REAL reason that we were there, and how ridiculous she was for being so silly and starstruck.
and we sat down in the auditorium, and the lights went dim, and before there was david crosby there was someone else: eric avery. the name meant nothing to my mother, but i was fifteen, and enchanted by all local music, and had snuck into every local bar that would have me, and there was fucking eric avery, bassist for jane's addiction, telling me that drugs were a bad idea (a secret: i had already decided that should i ever have to marry a member of jane's addiction - good god, would that have been a fate worse than death in 1990 - eric avery was it. dave navarro wore too much makeup, steven perkins seemed kind of silly, and perry farrel, well...even at 15 i knew what i couldn't keep up with).
the adrenaline must have made me forget that i wasn't speaking to my mom, because i think i grabbed her arm and fervently stagewhispered the whole scenario. which was fine, we clutched and giggled throughout the presentation, temporarily friends again until it was over, and we were leaving and who should be outside smoking a cigarette alone, but...eric avery. and my mom, being my mom, felt inclined to go over and say hello and thank you and how enjoyable and, of all things, this is my daughter...and then, as if that circle of hell wasn't hot enough, produced from her purse her camera. and asked if she couldn't take a picture of us, me and my could-be-one-day-jane's addiction-husband, as if the day had to be recorded for some miserable kind of posterity.
which, of course, it did have to be, because it was likely all those hours in days following spent gazing at the picture til the edges were bent that enabled me to recognize him, many many years later, without the orange hair and standing in my living room: eric avery.
eric avery, with whom i later shared (some) of the story, ate pollo loco, talked about joan didion and raging bull and martin scorcese, and whats eating gilbert grape. and i watched him eat his soup and tried to remember that my boyfriend, the loving sweet smart boy, was sitting right next to him. which was a lot easier to do once i realized he was married and that i wouldn't likely be called into that kind of duty.
phew. kind of.
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