Still Waiting

Lately my life seems to be in a prolonged intermission. I’m waiting. Soon my current job will come to an end and I will either get an offer for a new job in a new location, or I will be searching for a new job. I thought I would know which by now, but instead, I’m still waiting.

The waiting takes a toll. It’s hard to be a hedonist as waiting is hardly a fulfilling activity. Perhaps if I were waiting as some sort of deferred gratification, some hedonic reward I could feel good about this situation. Unfortunately this particular situation is one that prevents me from planning any future pleasures. “Oh that looks like a great show, when is it?” “Oh, April – I’m not sure where I’ll be in April” and so on.

Fortunately as an enlightened or rational hedonist, I can invoke a bit of the serenity prayer and come to terms that this situation of my employment is, at the moment, beyond my control. All well and good, but it took an evening of contemplative late night ocean gazing (one of my preferred methods of hedonist meditation) to get me to accept it. 

So next on my agenda, is to begin answering the internal questions of “just what can I control” and “what can I do to feel more fulfilled in my life.” There is still plenty of pleasure to be had by engaging with my friends and perhaps flexing a little creative muscle that have nothing to do with my job.

I have 8748 days to live.

Hedonist Year in Review

Perhaps it’s because I have a January birthday, but I tend to push my time of reflection on the past year in the space that comes just after New Years but before my Birthday.

I have to say on the surface It was a difficult year to be a hedonist. I lost a few things – partial hearing in my right ear, my gall bladder. My job almost got added to this list but that will go in 2014. Clearly I spent way too much time in medical offices this year, first with the hearing loss, then the gall bladder attack where pre-surgical tests forced me to confront my mortality in a new way. It seems I have an irregular heartbeat. It amuses me that I should of course live at my own and irregular rhythm - it only seems right. Unfortunately it seems an irregular heart beat is also an indicator of having had a “Silent Heart attack.” Personally I thought if I had a heart attack and didn’t realize it, I’d just be dead. Which quickly distilled to the thought - "oh, I should be dead already - the next time, I won't be waking up."

During the time before finding out I actually did not have a silent heart attack, I did some serious hand-wringing over how much shorter my life seemed to have gotten. At the outside I gave myself about 10 years - forget about that retirement thing. Some things didn't seem so important anymore. On the plus side of this psychic hand-wringing, it got me motivated to start putting my things in order and create a “death file” – A place Lisa could go to point the way to various documents, accounts, and other resources she might need in the event I should go and die on her. Having no kids it’s an easy thing to overlook, but I’d hate to make anyone wade through all my crap in the hopes of finding the important stuff. 

Work wise this has been a year of waiting and speculation. With the bankruptcy much of my work assignments went on hold  - and as the new company takes over I’m not certain there is a place for me. This has lead to some ambivalent job searching and somewhat obsessive networking. Without any workplace funding, I took a chance jumped in my car to crash a professional conference in Vegas last October. I got to chat with my industry peers, and touch base with many of my professional colleagues. I don’t know if this will pay off in any material way but it was good to feel a part of my industry - even if soon to be an unemployed member of it. It also felt good just to be on the road driving across the state. A stale metaphor perhaps, but I was moving and had some direction which otherwise has been lacking in my work life this year.

Travels remained close to home this year, but Lisa and I had an exceptional time turning a nephew’s wedding in Salinas into a two-week California adventure. Road trips with Lisa are among my favorite adventures. We rarely follow a plan, taking detours and stopping at any unusual place along the way that catches our eye. There’s a certain hedon-inducing giddiness that comes on exploring new places and making accidental discoveries. We drove along the Monterey bay and then heading east into the Sierras. Yosemite may have been closed due the Government shutdown, but nothing was more fun that crossing the state through roads we’ve never traveled on before. 

Familiar trips to Joshua Tree and Palm Springs were also made. These desert retreats are always great for recharging and getting fresh perspective. We go with a familiar cadre of friends and it’s like taking your personal support group along on vacation. The intent has always been to make some space to fill with creative activities, but honestly for me they have become opportunities to clear my mind to enable the creativity to come.

It seems my main creative endeavor this year was creating a tumblr account taking pictures of things “seen on my dog walk.” I thought I’d do this sporadically but it turns out I managed to take over 300 pictures this year – clearly some are better than others, but the activity itself kept me in a creative frame of mind. Otherwise I was happy to contribute to my friend's creative projects. I continued to appear in  Roger’s Scavenjester videos - amateur clown, collaborator, and co-conspirator.

Of course thanks to Roger, we found our way to many great performances this year. We started in January attending the New Fangled Opry – a vaudeville burlesque review that we quickly fell in love with, now miss, and hope will soon return in some form or another. As I recounted in an earlier post, I attended an Alien Fight Club workshop with Butoh Masters Koichi and Hiroko Tomano.  We also managed to see three Lucent Dossier performances, including two private parties where our pleasures were certainly indulged. Thanks again Roger.

Music this year was limited, to a few old favorites – Stereo Total the band I never tire of seeing live, Exene, the Blasters, Pere Ubu – and the Godfather of Welsh soul himself, Tom Jones. Thanks to the attentive eye of our friend Heidi, we were treated to seeing Mathew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty, but I think almost as fun was the evening after where we re-expressed our feelings of awe and delight taking in a rotating 360 view of LA at the Bonaventure – nothing quite like cocktails, conversation, and art.

Speaking of Cocktails, 2013 was the year of Rye, as we returned to the Carthy Circle at Disney’s California Adventure to enjoy numerous classic Rye Manhattans. Unfortunately, this was the year that we were finally priced out of Disneyland’s annual passports – so we’ve expanded our horizons to hotel lounges, restaurants, bars and occasional speakeasy. But the love of Rye has made the standard Maker’s Mark Manhattan unpalatable, as well as anything with a cherry that isn’t Luxardo. The year spoiled us, but we are all making much better cocktails.

Some things that have excited me this year include photographer David Gueringer and his portraits of LA personas "A Curious Collection of Uncommon Individuals"– of course knowing a number of them has it’s own appeal, but I love how they are captured just as I’d expect to see them at a Lucent party, Art Walk, or some other vaudeville burlesque – in other words the places I would love to be.

My other discoveries seem to flow out of Brooklyn, starting with photographer Clayton Cubbit – whose infamous Hysterical Literature videos caused a bit of a stir. I love his work, and am intrigued by the creative ways he’s using photography that challenge the erosion made by the ubiquity of camera. From him it was easy to rediscover Molly Crabapple who’s “Dr. SketchyAnti-art School”  I once followed in the MySpace era. Now turned graphic journalist documentarian, I find her opinions fresh, intriguing, and right on – she’s become a curator to my intellectual core as I follow most of her links on her twitter feed to find still more exciting discoveries.

Looking to the future, there is still so much uncertainty. I don't know who I'll be working for, or where. So far though, I'm comfortable with their foreseeable outcomes, we will do well, if its an adventure in a new place, or rediscovering our old home. I’m still focused on my mortality as that keeps me focused on the things that really matter. I even acquired a nice little ap (thanks to following a link from Molly Crabapple to Chelsea Summers) that reminds me of how many days I have left to live (8779 on the day this was published). You think differently when you put a finite number on the days you have left on this earth (see the third paragraph above) I’m not really worried about my job. The possibility of a move, means a focus on getting rid of clutter and shedding the objects that have no special meaning to me. A psychic move is already taking place regardless if a physical one follows. Here's to 2014.

Adventures in Hedonism - Neverbuilt Los Angeles

Sunday I visited the Architecture + Design
Museum for the first time. I went to see the "Neverbuilt Los Angeles" exhibit, a collection of architectural models and drawings of proposed buildings and structures that never made it past their design phase. It was a great show and great afternoon.

One of the nice things about this museum is that it is located right across the street from LACMA. This allowed us to make a day of the trip, starting with cocktails and brunch at the Stark Bar at Ray's. Everytime I go here, I wonder why it’s been so long since my last visit. I love the way LACMA has evolved - and as a cocktail sipping hedonist, the Stark Bar is a cornerstone of that evolution. Craft cocktails created with homemade infusions such as, masala rye whiskey; or unique cocktails such as the Morning Glory Fizz - made from scotch, absinthe, egg white and and freshly squeezed lemon, or the Silk and Gators - made from Cognac, Sherry, Vermouth, and Fernet. Honestly, I could have just spent the afternoon here and had a wonderfully hedonistic time sampling their cocktail menu.

But we Came for Neverbuilt Los Angeles, and that was delight itself. Part of this year’s Pacific Standard Time collection of integrated exhibits celebrating LA, we'd already seen the Modern Architecture exhibit at the Getty which told the story of LA’s growth and evolution. This show, on the other hand presented a fantasy view of LA, the LA the could have been. A massive Frank Lloyd Wright makeover of downtown, complete with underground speedways, a forum, and airstrip. Towers to rival the Empire State Building, or a chain of man made islands off Santa Monica bay complete with freeways and boat slips.

I think I took particular pleasure in all the proposed mass transit systems. All monorails and people movers - this was the future promised me in my childhood. Disneyland expanded into everyday life. Every building had a helipad or landing strip. Airport waiting rooms in their entirety plucked up by helicopter to pluck it down just outside the airplane ready to board. I suppose somewhere along the line we began to realize how unpleasant a sky full of noisy helicopters might be, and so many of these visions fell by the wayside, opposed by neighbors or left unfunded.

It's hard not to take an imaginary ride through these potential futures. This was aided by some clever additions to the exhibit. The first being three large lenticular portraits that overlaid some of the proposed structures over their present day landscapes. Second, a collection of animated renderings of some of the structures, allowing us to do a flyby of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Downtown LA.

Of course along with the fanciful where the horrific. Structures that thankfully never got funded and remain in the imagination - including my own favorite neverbuilt, City of Angels Monument. A 350 foot Angel atop a 750 foot tower/pedistal. It was a gaudy cross between a hood ornament, the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty and the Monument to the Third International. I love it for it's absurdity as well as the audacity that thought it could be built.

The show appealed to the child in me, the unstoppable imagination of impracticality. I can imagine myself sitting before a pile of legos ready to build my own monument, museum, or country club without a worry of who else might actually live there, or what other’s might think. The show is a treat, seeing the LA that never was.

Death & Hedonism

I read this article yesterday about a double suicide by a Brooklyn couple who hosted a radio show called “The Pursuit of Happiness.” Now I know nothing of the show, beyond what’s in the article, but as someone engaged in his own “pursuit of happiness” via enlightened hedonism it does force me to take pause and contemplate this sad and ironic occurrence.  Am I on a similar crash course with despair? Is this but a fool’s quest that ensures that I will never obtain the things I seek?

It’s a sobering thought, and one I’m not sure I can fully grasp. On the one hand I support the right to choose to end one’s own life. I’ve seen far too many instances in my own life where the medical mechanics of prolonging life for life’s sake seems so at odds with actual living life. But is what Lynne Rosen and John Littig faced really so dire? Again, not knowing them I can’t really judge, but I’ve also seem many people in my life grapple with depression or addiction to know we sometimes are not in a frame of mind to even perceive let alone understand our real situation. I feel sad for them, as I look through the details of their lives to assure myself that my fate will be different.

And yet, we all are going to die sometime. I figure for myself there are enough external forces at work that I won’t have die at my own hand – why rush things? But in the end who knows what circumstances may be in store for me.

Because life is full of happenstance, or we have a penchant for pattern recognition, I attended the first Long Beach Death Café last night.  Started by Jon Underwood in the UK two years ago, the death café is a sort of salon/movement of communities coming together to talk about a topic most of us would rather avoid, death. The Long Beach event was organized by Jen Leong, and her facebook posting about the event intrigued me – particularly her phrase, “I really believe that having open discussions about death can help us live better lives.” 

As a hedonist that rests upon my underpinnings in existentialism. I regularly return to the concept that it is death that makes life valuable. Since our lives take place in finite space and time, every action or decision is of extreme importance. We don’t get to do them again so they shape both who we are and who we become. This is where the “enlightened” part of hedonism comes into play – we must be mindful of our finite space, our limitations, so we make the choices and take the actions that will truly fulfill us and make us happy.

So the Death Café itself is not intended to be a support group, or be in line with any particular belief structure – rather it is just to have an ongoing conversation about death in all its many incarnations. The salon like structure immediately appealed to me – and since this first meet was such a small group, I probably talked more than I should have. I don’t want to say too much about the content of the evening, as it’s intended as a “safe zone,” with individuals’ sharings to be treated in confidence, but topics this evening included suicide, preparing for the death of loved ones, immortality, and reincarnation.

I went into this session wondering how sustainable it could be. Honestly, how long can you talk about death before the topic is exhausted? But I found as I left, that we had barely touched the surface. That despite already talking plenty, I had so much more I wanted to say, and query, and listen. We hide from death, but it is always around us and plays a role in so many things. I’m looking forward to future editions of the death café – long may it live.

That brings me around to the beginning my day, because it also fits the pattern. As I got up for work and scanned my messages while coffee brewed, I got word that a friend of mine had been in a car accident. He survived and despite some injuries was able to walk away from a situation that easily could have killed him. It’s these moments, these brushes with death, that make me realize how fragile and precious life is. It prompts me to be grateful, to honor my mortality, and make sure that I am making the decisions and taking the actions that will lead me to a more fulfilling life.  There are regrets one can have for things that were done, but far worse are the regrets for the things we never get around to doing.

Adventures in Hedonism - The Lyrids

Chalk it up to boyhood fantasies of being an astronaut, or simply that desire to sit in awe of nature, but I have a love of astronomical events - eclipses, comets, the movement of the plants - all of it fascinates me. Early in the year I added a number of events to my calendar to make sure I wouldn't miss them. I paid particular attention to the meteor showers. The Lyrids come every year between April 16 - 26 usually peaking on the 22nd. This year we managed to find a place in Joshua Tree during the peak. High desert, clear skies, a perfect place to watch the shower unfold.

Well, despite the facebook claims that this would be the "rarest of events" and that "thousands" of meteors could be seen, I knew enough to consult some actual astronomy sites to understand what might actually be in store. Yes this is one of the main annual meteor shower events, but the moon was approaching full and would be spending a fair amount of time in the sky durring the peak event. That moonlight alone could wash out many of the fainter events.

Living in the city with so much other competing light pollution it's hard to conceive of how much light an almost full moon can produce. On our first evening, stepping out in to the night it was amazing to see how much detail you could see once your eyes adjusted - the boulders, the cactus, the Joshua Trees, the lone dirt road riding along the valley floor. But looking skyward, Jupiter, Saturn, some of the major constellations - an absence of the star field I had hoped to see. I probably spent at least an hour hoping that some significant meteor would streak through bright enough to compete with the moon.

Alas, I saw nothing, but I knew that might be the case with the moon as it was. There was still a chance after moonset. So I set my alarm and got a little sleep in the meantime. 4:30 is never a comfortable time to get up for me, despite doing it for work on a near regular basis. But I got up before dawn and looked up at the most magnificent sky. The Milky Way stretched out across my view and I could see the earth riding the sun along the edge of the galaxy. A multitude of constellations who's names I don't know made it difficult to finally locate Lyra - the focal point of this shower and the brilliant star Vega pointing the way.

I let an hour pass, and then the first glow of dawn started to peak from behind the mountains. Slowly the pink and orange glow started to erase the star field as once plentiful constellations started to fade into the sky leaving only Saturn and the brightest stars. I didn't see one meteor - and having read the astronomy sites, I knew that was a possibility. As predictable as these showers can be, whatever you see is couched in so many variables that it's impossible to predict what minute particles left over from passing comet's tail might actually strike the earth's atmosphere and leave a trail to make a wish on.

There are still a few days left in which to see some meteors fall.

I will keep watching.