3 A.M. EPIPHANY: RELUCTANCE

[ORIGINALLY POSTED ON MYSPACE ON FEBRUARY 10, 2009, WRITTEN WHILE ATTENDING AWP IN CHICAGO.]

I finally broke out my copy of Brian Kiteley's The 3. AM Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises That Transform Your Fiction and decided to start doing some exercises to get the creative juices flowing. I kind of meditated on it, opened my mind a bit, gave up resistance, and this is what came of it. I wrote it at the sushi restaurant over some of the weirdest, yet most delicious sushi I've ever eaten---and now, I'm going to reward myself by finishing it. (The sushi, that is.)

The exercise, called Reluctance, challenges the writer to write a fragment of fiction from the first person POV, but limits the usage of personal and personal possessive pronouns to only two in the entire story---the point of which is to encourage the fictive voice to merely be a first-person observer without insinuating him/herself into the story except as an observer and reporter.

 

THE PERFORMANCE OF A LIFETIME

I’m sitting two tables away from them, close enough to overhear their conversation, but not so close as to be overly conspicuous as an eavesdropper. She knows they’re being watched, but he has no idea. She is utterly self-aware and conscious of the impression she gives. Every one of her moves is intentional and studied. He, on the other hand, has no thought for anything past their table.

As they talk, she tosses her hair once or twice in a grand gesture, in case some foolish person is too involved with their buffalo wing starter to notice she’s there. After the long, impossibly shiny hair settles back into place, her chin drops and her mouth slides into a wet-lipped seductive little bow. She seems to be quite focused on him, but she is also regarding the audience in her periphery.

She is quite beautiful. No doubt this is what drew him to her in the first place. Like most very beautiful women, though, much of her energy seems to be drawn from the outside in. This display between them tonight is not new to her. She is accustomed to luring, to drawing attention, both wanted and unwanted, to herself. She’s probably been at this since she was a young teen, and has had years to cultivate and hone her skills at commanding the room---any room. People must look. They will have no choice. It is expected, required. It is part of her seduction of the world at large.

However, at their little table, there is no seduction going on---at least no obvious one. In fact, they are quarreling, these two lovers. They speak mostly in low, tense whispers, hers a bit more stagey and audible than his. She has made him jealous, it seems, by flirting inappropriately with someone. Foolish boy. Does he not know this is just her way? Does he not comprehend the rare, fragile creature with whom he has become entangled? She can no more stop her wooing, her flirtatious luring, than she could the beating of her own heart. She might not sleep with them. But she must draw them to her; she must entice and seduce them, at least emotionally, just to reassure herself that she can. If he does not see this, he will lose her. Already, in the middle of this little café, at their tiny table, as the waiter sets down their meals and they momentarily hush their contretemps, she has taken time out to clandestinely seduce the entire room with another small toss of her glossy caramel mane, her flashing eyes, and her sotto voce self-defense.

“Look at me,” she says with every bewitching molecule of that flawless body. “See how he punishes me? See how he victimizes me for the very thing that brought him to me?" 

And, in this at least, she is right, of course. He has failed to see the essential truth of her. Beauty is not a thing about her. It is her. It is not skin-deep in this one. It is woven in the strands of her DNA, lodged in every corpuscle that bursts through her veins. That perfect skin, those finely chiseled features, the delicacy of her small, full-lipped mouth---all were brought together by some alchemic force during the prenatal division of her cells to create this vision of womanly perfection.

If he does not see this soon, if he does not accustom himself to her innate caprice and exhibitionism and learn to accept the essence of her, he will certainly have to lose her. She will tire of his efforts to turn her from goddess to ordinary woman, and she will move on to the next conquest, until she finds a man who can handle her by keeping her attention while allowing her to be what her nature dictates she be---the object of unattainable, unpossessable sexual desire.

They are through with their meal, neither of their plates having been touched by fork. He sullenly throws money on their table for the bill, and she dabs softly at the corner of her eye with the cloth napkin. Are her tears real? Even from this short distance, it is difficult to say.

As they leave, in his anger, he strides ahead of her, allowing her to fall a few paces behind. Another mistake on his part, for this gives her one last chance to work the room before she leaves, to leave one last taste on the tongue of all the desirous males who watch her with an idea that she might be theirs, and, should such a miracle occur, they would certainly know how to treat her better than this handsome, petulant boy. This last she does with a sensual expertise that says that she may soon be available, that she is willing, that for the price of some tenderness and understanding, she will gladly give of herself. Her smoothness and facility in accomplishing this last bit of intrigue would make even Aphrodite blush.

As the door closes behind her and she is on the street with her silly young lover, their fate as a couple seems all but sealed. She will leave him, of course, and soon. He will almost certainly be completely undone by their ending, unable to hold his goddess and incapable of returning to the world of merely mortal women.

Her fate, on the other hand, could take one of many paths, some exalted, and some tragic. I am left alone over this now-cold entree to wonder where the trajectory of her perfect beauty will finally transport her.

Hope On Hudson

Hope Edelman, who used to teach creative non-fiction at my alma mater, Antioch, gave an interview on our local CBS Channel 2 news about Jennifer Hudson's loss of her family this past weekend, particularly her mother. Edelman is the author of Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss, a collection of stories, including her own, of women who hve lost their mothers.

I had hoped to study with Edelman during my creative non-fiction semester, but she left Antioch before the opportunity arose. (I'm not taking it personally, though.)

My heart goes out to Jennifer Hudson and her sister for their loss. I'm hoping they can find their way out of a pain so deep as to be unimaginable.

~C~

Here's Something You Don't See Every Day.

It's not unusual to see huge feature credits in the middle of a trailer for a movie that has an "all-star" cast. But the trailer for Gus Van Sant's "Milk," the biographical account of the political ascendancy of San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay candidate to be elected to public office, includes an absolutely ENORMOUS single-card credit for writer Dustin Lance Black. (The image at right really doesn't do it justice -- it's HUGE in the trailer.)

Black, who has but a few credits to his name, has written several episodes of one of our favorite, favorite HBO series, Big Love. It's very rare that a relatively unknown screenwriter is given that kind of nod, particularly in a trailer. His agent must be Jesus Christ, I swear. But it's nice to see anyway.

Here is the trailer:



Personal favorite moment:

Dan White (as played by Josh Brolin): America can't survive without the family.
Milk (as played by Sean Penn): We're not against that.
White: Can two men reproduce?
Milk: No, but God knows we keep trying.

Penn's performance looks (as usual) amazing. I have so resisted him, on principle more than anything (I think it was the whole Madonna nightmare that soured me), but I think I'm finally coming to the point where I can come out of the closet and admit the truth.

Yes, America, it's a fact. I'm a Sean Penn fan.

~C~

Graduation Day

Photographic evidence for you all that I did, in fact, actually graduate on Sunday. And I managed to walk across the stage in heels without tripping, which was good.

Also, note to self. The next time I graduate, I'm going to cut a nice little bang into my hair. I look like such a doofus in the morterboard, but Jillian, to my immediate left looks kind of darling with that little bang. So stylish....

Oh, well... spilt milk. It doesn't matter -- I got me a big new fancy MFA. Don't you love that new post-graduate degree smell? Mmmmm...

~C~

A Day of Victories

Yesterday, I had my final reading for my MFA. I read an excerpt from the first chapter of a novel I'm working on. It went well.

Savannah was there, along with a couple of good friends. I taught my class on Wednesday, and that also went well -- though I fell about ten minutes short of material. Thank God I had a talkative, question-askin' bunch of folks. I'm hoping my evaluations are merciful. Today, I go back for a few final things, the closing conversation, and then....

I'm done.

My list of things to do from here on out are as follows:

1. Buy shoes for graduation ceremony

2. Go to Santa Barbara tonight and watch a good friend's band.

3. Get up tomorrow and get to hotel where ceremony is being held.

4. Walk across stage to receive diploma without tripping or falling off new shoes.

Then, I will be a bearer of a post-graduate degree.

And tonight, my daughter told me that, when people asked her how I was doing, she told them I was great, that I was getting my MFA, that I was training for a triathlon, and that... wait for it... she was very, very proud of me.

(sniff, sniff) I'm fine. Anybody got a tissue?

Fairly happy here.... Just sayin'....

~C~

Tomorrow, It Begins... and Ends.

As you can see by the counter at the top of the blog, my MFA graduation is a mere ten days away. My final residency begins tomorrow. My manuscript is done (see photo at left), my paperwork is (mostly) done. I have my outline for my final lecture nearly done, though I need to sort out the wording for the writing assignment (which will, mercifully, eat up about 20 of the 50 minutes I'm supposed to lecture). I haven't decided on a final reading yet, but I have a lot of options, and I'll decide later.

Words cannot express my feelings right now. I am nearly done. I'm almost out of school. I've been working and going to school since 2003. I'm this close to getting a bit of my life and free time back.

Here is a little list of things I will be able to do, starting on December 17th:

• Read for pleasure (chick lit, anyone?)


• Write for pleasure (blog posts, anyone?)


• Play the Sims 2 and not feel guilty


• Resume my 3D digital art endeavors

And that's just a start. Of course, there is the part where I have to put together my CV and start looking for teaching jobs, so I can teach and write and not have to type contracts for spoiled, pampered, prima donna actresses anymore. There's that. But I can work it all in.

Oh, and for anybody out there considering going back to school and working fulltime, here are two things you need to stock up on before you attempt it. (See photo at right)
~C~

Finally... I'm published.

The newly minted MySpace lit journal, Nouveau Blank, has published one of my short stories, entitled Til We Come Round Right, for it's November issue. This could be the beginning of a trend -- where I actually make the effort to submit my work, and, occasionally, people actually take the time and trouble to publish it.

Hmmmm...

Enjoy.

~C~

What YOU Write!

But enough about me and what I write. Let's talk about you, and what YOU write. Or what you might write, if you be courageous enough to pick up the soon-to-be-thrown-down gauntlet.

Every year on November 1st, tens of thousands of intrepid writers and writer-wannabes gather over at National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.org) to undertake the Herculean task of writing a 50,000-word novel in a mere 30 days. Impossible, you say? Nay, say I, and so says NaNoWriMo's founder and yearly participant, Chris Baty. Baty founded the site in 1999 with only 21 writers, convinced that the biggest stumbling block novelists face when sitting down to write a first draft is the absence of a deadline. Baty refers to the deadline as the single most important tool in writing, next to the implement with which the writer applies the words to paper. In his FAQ section, Baty writes:

"NaNoWriMo is all about the magical power of deadlines. Give someone a goal and a goal-minded community and miracles are bound to happen. Pies will be eaten at amazing rates. Alfalfa will be harvested like never before. And novels will be written in a month."

And they are. In fact, Baty lists eleven novelists who've published novels that were birthed as NaNoWriMo projects. There are no awards given (except an icon, a certificate and the satisfaction of a deadline met). It's art strictly for art's sake, says Baty. At the end of it all, a writer is guaranteed nothing but a good headstart (or, more optimistically, a completed first draft) of a novel.

But wait, I hear you say! We can't wait until November to begin our writing adventures. And besides, we laugh in the face of expositional narrative prose! This is Hollywood, baby, and in this town it's all about the screenplay. Well, fret not, my starsmooching little friends. For now, there is a sister site to NaNoWriMo called ScriptFrenzy.org. And if you hussle on over there right this minute, you'll be in time to sign up to write a 20,000-word screenplay in 30 days in the month of June. The same rules apply to the screenplays as to the novels (with the exception that screenplays may be written by a partnership of two writers, whereas novels must be singularly authored).

Writing is a solitary business, and one of its downfalls is that a writer can fall victim to the oppressors that live inside her own head. The benefit of spending 30 days, twice a year, locked in mortal combat with a literary endeavor, and being in that boat with thousands of other fellow combatants similarly engaged, is that you have back-up, support and many voices of sanity that will bring you out of your head and back on the path to getting the words out. As my mentor, Rob Roberge, has said, "A first draft's job is to get written." That's all. Just get written. Because every writer knows that writing is rewriting, and you can't rewrite what has yet to be written.

So, my little spectators, it's time to get those feet wet in a safe, supportive atmosphere where you don't have to show anyone your work if you don't want, but will find a receptive audience if you do.

Let's see what you guys can write. C'mon, baby. You know you want it.

~C~

What I Wrote

I've been writing and posting some essays and a couple of fiction pieces on Helium.com. The above link takes you to my bio page, where all my pieces are listed. I'd love it if you guys would read them -- the greater the number of hits, the higher in the ratings I rise (and the greater the opportunity for me to get paid).

If you want to join Helium, I'd be beholden if you could e-mail and let me know, so I can send you an official invite. You don't need it to join, but, again, it helps if people I've invited to read end up joining.

Some of the non-fiction topics so far have been on the following:

When Dogs Raise Kittens
Don Imus
Virginia Tech shootings
How I rate Helium pieces
Why Did the Chicken Cross The Road

A couple of my fiction pieces have been posted as well:

Death of the American Western
The Gibson Girl

Anyway, as I post, I'll post a notice here, too. I'd be much obliged if you guys would pop over from time to time to take a look at my writings.

Thanks.

~C~

Back From My MFA Residency

I just spent ten glorious days as a writer. Not a legal secretary who manages to squeeze in writing when she has the time and energy, but a writer. Considered so by other writers. I did a reading of one of my short stories, workshopped some essays, and got some really amazing feedback.

I got the mentor I wanted (Rob Roberge), and my co-mentees are some of my very favorite people in the program. I have to spend some time on my long (25 pages) critical paper, but I have a topic about which I'm very enthusiastic, and I hope to use it as the basis for my final grad lecture that I'll be giving in December '07, as a condition of my graduation from the program.

I can't believe I only have a year left of this. I was once so anxious to get it over with, but now that people that I've gone through the program with are starting to graduate and leave, its becoming clear how much I'm going to miss this when its over. Ah, well... still two more project periods to go, so I'd best not be counting chickens before they hatch and then get eaten by coyotes (sorry... went to the dark side for a minute).

Good to be back. I've got a ticker up top that's counting the days until my next Residency, specifically so I don't have to.

~C~

Environmental Concerns - Journal Entry # 5

11/10/05 -- ENCINO, CA.

I live in a large, 2 bedroom apartment with two roommates. They are both freeloading at the moment, since I'm the only one of us who is gainfully employed. While one of them has job prospects, the other is destined to spend his days sleeping on the couch all day and being waited on by women. The job hunter is pictured at right. The permanent loafer is playing the part of a fur stole.

I moved into this apartment in 1996. Come August of next year, I will have lived here ten years. That's about twice as long as I've ever lived anywhere in my life. It is also the first place I've ever lived where I spent time actually apartment hunting, chose it myself with no outside input, and have paid the rent and the bills myself (with no help and with varying degrees of success through time). It is my home. But until last year, it was gravely lacking.

When I signed the lease, it was made pretty clear that no pets were allowed. My manager had been begging and pleading with the landlord to change the policy, but he refused to consider it. I personally feel landowners who ban pets should be subjected to any number of creative and innovative tortures (like being forced to watch every episode of all ten seasons of Survivor back-to-back). Denying someone the company of an animal is cruel. Jerry came in through the back door early this year, stayed secret for a week, then was tacitly accepted by the management in what has come to be a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

I have been raised with pets my entire life (minus the eight years I lived here under this bio-fascist regime). By rough count, the permanent pets* I have had in my life consisted of five dogs, seventeen cats, one bird (a cockateil -- 'nuff said there), a quarter horse, a couple of Oriental fire-bellied toads, five hamsters and a guinea pig. My daughter kept her iguana at her father's house, which explains why Iggy has since shuffled off this mortal coil. My ex is a nice guy, but clueless about the care and feeding of dependent, confined things. I've laid down the law in this regard: The next exotic pet my daughter acquires, she pays for, and it lives at our house (Note: Tarantulas need not apply).

Jerry is what they call an "inside cat." He used to be an "inside/outside" cat when he lived in Savannah's father's house. But we live close enough to the hills that letting him run around outside makes me uncomfortable. I've already sacrificed one cat to the Coyote Gods -- I'd rather not do it again. Even in his tom-catting days, he wasn't a hunter. His sister was. Her reputation for bringing home half-eviscerated baby rabbits is the stuff of cat lore throughout the feline worldm I'm sure. But Jerry can't hunt. Won't hunt. Shows no interest in it. Unless he's sitting on one side of the glass, and the sparrows are pecking the seeds off the patio concrete on the other. Then he becomes the Great White Hunter.

Through the sliding glass door, he stalks them, follows them, conceals himself behind the vertical blinds, and makes that noise that my ex-college roommate used to refer to as "eeping" -- his jaw drops and "chatters", while a soft, very low machine-gun sound comes out of his mouth. I can only assume that the low-frequency sound is meant to help cats in the wild coordinate their conjoined attack on the unsuspecting prey. As it happens, because of the glass that separates them, the cat could be belting a cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and the "prey" would be oblivous. But it doesn't stop him from having his little primal "lion" (or "puma" or "ocelot") take over and drive him to hunt. The cruel sadist in me waits for the day when, after I've cleaned the sliding glass door, he actually decides to throw caution to the wind and pounce.

Watching him, I'm reminded that he started as a "wild thing." He wasn't really designed to live "inside," though doing so means he'll live a longer, healthier life. He was created to hunt other wild things. The same markers that dot his DNA are the ones carried by whatever feral feline began his lineage thousands of years ago, and DNA dies hard.

What about our DNA, then? What prompts so many of us to require the companionship of real, live "wild things" (domesticated though they may be) in our dwellings? Why does that give us such comfort -- lowering our blood pressure, raising our endorphines, curing all manner of physical ailment? What coaxed the first hunter/gatherer to believe that bringing home the pups of the wolf he'd just killed, then raising them as pets was a good idea -- especially knowing what truly awful pets tamed wolves make? (How many Neanderthal toddlers went missing, do you think?) Is it the control over nature? Is it companionship they give us? I don't live alone, after all. I have a teenager at home. And she actually wants to spend a lot of her time with me, as crazy as that sounds. So why the need for a big, largely inert furball that gives very little in the way of material benefit?

I don't have an answer yet. It very well might be the subject of my final paper. Film at eleven….

*This does not include the countless fosters -- rescued litters of barely-weaned feral kittens, stray dogs and homeless cats, rats and injured squirrels which came to live for a while, then later found new homes elsewhere.

Environmental Concerns - Journal Entry #4

Fourth (actually, fifth, but the original No. 4 was so boring, I decided to spare you all -- you can thank me later) entry in my Environmental Landscapes Journal.

10/23/05 – ENCINO, CA

Did you know that, prior to 1994, the state of California spent two times more on freeway shoulder landscaping than on the earthquake retro-fitting overpasses and abuttments? That’s what Michael Ventura said in his article for the May-June, 1994 issue of Psychology Today. The result, of course, was that a bunch of overpasses either actually fell down, or at least threatened to, following the Northridge quake of January 17, 1994. Clearly, the vegetation that we drive past every day is critically important to us. I started to write “the vegetation that we whizz past at 65 mph,” but who are we kidding here? Whizzing? I personally spend most of my time crawling along at a breathtaking 25 mph on the freeway these days.

Yesterday, I spent more time than usual regarding it when my distributor went to the Great Irretrievably Broken Auto Parts Graveyard in the Sky on the southbound 405, just short of Mulholland. Not the most interesting spot on the freeway, granted. A couple of bushes of mustardweed, which, if I’m not mistaken, is indigenous There’s nothing much to look at, except to stare longingly into one’s rear-view mirror, waiting for the tow truck that’s promised to come and rescue me. (Hey, wait a minute… those cars are whizzing, aren’t they. That blurred SUV just to the left my rear-view mirror is most assuredly whizzing. Bastards!).

So, being me, and a bit perverse, I came home and looked up “freeway landscaping + california” in a couple of search engines to see what I can find on all that “landscaped” real estate that we pass by every day. It turns out that we in California spend a lot of money on freeway landscaping. A large chunk of the alotted $27.5 million set aside for road maintenance is earmarked for planting and maintaining the vegetation that grows along the freeways that run across and along the entire State of California. This is where the mustardweed comes in, apparently. Recycled water is being used in some areas, but it seems to be meeting resistance from some locals who don’t fully trust what they’re neighbors are doing in their sinks and showers (and, really, can we blame them?) And because we’re trying not to water anything extra these days, landscapers are choosing low-maintenance, native plants that require little extra care than the environment gives on its own. Mustardweed and lantana are the biggies, with laurel sumac and certain ground cover flowers (ice plants, ivy, etc.) coming up strong behind. I personally have a soft spot for lantana from childhood, when I found that the little blossoms make fabulous Barbie wedding bouquets.

No lantana today, though. Just some rather ratty mustardweed, a few trees on the hillside across the way, and a bunch of taillights from the cars whizzing (oh, yes, I said whizzing) by as I wait for Triple A. And because this is a journal – one that you insist on reading, you glutton for punishment – if I have to suffer through this misery, so do you.

Welcome to my fresh hell.

Environmental Concerns -- Journal Entry #3

10/16/05 – ENCINO, CA

I think somebody’s grandmother is buried under the roses in the courtyard of my apartment building. No, seriously. There has to be something in the soil or the atmosphere that those roses love, because they bloom longer and bigger than any rose bushes I’ve ever seen. My late godmother, who had one of the greenest thumbs I’ve known, used to tend roses in her very sunny garden every year. And every year, depending on the variety of the bush, some would bloom in April, and when they closed up shop at the end of the summer, others would pick up the slack from October to December. But no one of her rose bushes bloomed the entire time.

The roses in the courtyard start blooming in early April, and don’t quit until sometime around early to mid-December. The gardeners who tend them are instructed by the apartment manager to cut them back to the stalk every year in January. After a couple of months, there they are, grown back to around four feet tall and blooming again. I am not the person best suited to explain this phenomenon. I have mentioned before that I am a “herbicidal maniac.” When my godmother passed away in 1999, I was given the heartiest of her plants, the nearly indestructible pothos she’d tended for years (my reputation for horticultural devastation is renowned among family members – and yet, they love me anyway, which is sweet of them). It’s a well-known fact that to kill a pothos takes the coordinated effort of both a gasoline flame-thrower and the gravest gypsy curse. Linny’s pothos is dead now.

It was an accident. I swear.

So, why the roses bloom all year round is a mystery, especially to me. There is a rumor -- having nothing to do with the roses per se, but inspired by other weird, inexplicable phenomena -- that the building is haunted. This appeals to my twisted imagination, but I have little faith in its voracity as an explanation for the blooming foliage.

If I had to speculate, I’d say the prime reason for the roses’ constant state of blossom has to do with the layout of the building itself. The white stucco walls of the apartment reflect light from all angles, during most times of the daylight, most times of the year. Even on an overcast day, diffused light bounces off the walls and comes at objects in the courtyard from all angles. I know this because it’s a terrific place to take pictures, if you’re looking for good quality diffused lighting. What takes a fashion photographer’s camera assistants an hour to pull off with bounce cards and reflectors occurs naturally in our courtyard. I wonder if being bombarded with light all day long, from all directions, doesn’t confuse those poor little roses something awful. Maybe they can’t tell the difference between April and October because the light is little different between those months here. Roses love light, and they get it in spades in this place. And they love water, which they also get in abundance, as the leaky hose hooks up to the spigot at the corner of the rose bed when the manager waters the plants on her patio.

So maybe that’s enough to keep them happy to bloom from spring through winter every year. Then again, there’s still my “buried granny” theory. Which, when you think about it, dovetails nicely into the “haunted apartment” theory. Which, when you think about it some more, sounds like the beginning of an interesting short story. Hmmm….

Environmental Concerns -- Journal Entry #2

Second in the series of Environmental Landscape journals I wrote for class.

10/13/05 -- CENTURY CITY, CA

I am on a mission from God. Okay, not God exactly. My good friend, who is working on a project for Disney, needs me to drop something off at the Fox television clip library, which is housed on the Lot. I get to leave the high-rise where I work -- Fox Plaza, otherwise known in the movies as "Nakatomi Plaza" (from the movie "Die Hard" which was shot here). The reason for my joy is two-fold. One, I get to take a walk in the open air (away from a buidling where the windows don't open and the climate control is always off), and see some "outside"; and, two, because Thursday is sushi day at the Fox Commissary.

The Fox TV clip library is housed on one of the only parts of the 20th Century Fox lot that was part of the original studio, before it was sold off and developed in the early 70s by that ratbastard Marvin Davis (I'm sorry -- that just slipped out). It's my favorite part of the studio, because there's lots of history here. The old dressing room bungalows have been converted to production offices, and the two "Writers Buildings" (old and new) now serve to hold the staple production companies (David E. Kelley, Matt Groening) that make the shows that are currently keeping the studio afloat. (Nature lesson #1 -- The one who gathers the most resources at his disposal gets the choicest real estate.)

On my way out of the Old Writers' Building, where the clip library is stashed, I see two of the Fox's finest. No, not the security guards. I mean the Lot cats. Almost all backlots, from Paramount to Disney, are full of feral cats that have been abandoned or have made their way there. They're speedy little devils, though, and before I can capture them on my camera phone, they've ducked under the little wildernesses that someone has planted between the production bungalows. The Fox cats have one single job on the lot -- they are the rat police. A couple of studios have tried to rid themselves of the inconvenient cat population, only to reinstate it later when they discovered that with the absence of the cats came the large, unchallenged daring rodents. Now most studios institute a "neuter-and-release" program, whereby the cats are not allowed to breed out of control, but are allowed to continue unmolested as they do their thing. (Nature lesson #2: In the presence of a balanced eco-system, introducing a man-made disturbance regime is often ill-advised and always tedious to rectify.)

In front of the New Writers' Building, where the writers for The Simpsons and Family Guy hang out (clearly a disturbed bunch), there is an old fountain that has not worked correctly since the first time I visited the lot in the early '80s. The trickle of water, which is intended to flow from the top, then down all sides of the two-tiered structure, and into the pool below, has been rendered ridiculous with a single trickle down the right-hand side. The only thing that makes the fountain even remotely useful, other than as a nostalgic conversation piece, is that some impetuous fool has stocked the fountain with koi fish. This was not a Fox executive decision, I'm sure. Fox studio executives don't tend to make decisions that create artful little patches of nature anywhere. Still, the fish are pretty happy here (at least, they seem to be -- with fish, who can tell?), and the odd circumstance of their enclosure has not seemed to dampened their appetites. As I walk around the fountain, they follow me, gathering in a school at the fountain's edge, jawing the water, waiting for me to feed them. (Nature lesson #3: Life can pretty much happen anywhere it's given a foot in the door; and Nature lesson #4: Being chased and stalked by rapacious koi fish is weird and creepy.)

From a slightly different angle, it appears that the fountain has actually become a watering hole for expensive motor vehicles. There's a metaphor here somewhere, but the whole koi fish episode has kind of creeped me out and I can't find it save my life. You're welcome to take a whack at it. (Nature Lesson #5: see Nature Lesson #7).

Fox doesn't tend to like "accidental nature" too much (I refer you back to the paragraph on feral cats). Fox likes its nature planned, coordinated, architected, drawn and then brought in on flatbed trucks. Nowhere was this more evident when Rupert Murdoch's wife… make that Rupert Murdoch's former wife (not to be confused with the sweet young thing that currently holds that particular distinction) -- decided that Fox needed a bit of gussying up. In her defense, she couldn't have been more right. Ten years ago, we who had once worked at Paramount (arguably the most architecturely beautiful and still intact studio remaining to date) referred to Fox as "Tobacco Road." Trailers abounded, there was nothing even remotely resembling a landscape design, and even the Executive Building, where the chief-high-muckity-mucks worked, smelled something like a stable on a hot July day.

Anna Murdoch set about to create one little patch of civility in the midst of disaster. Thus was born "The Walk." Extending from Studio 20 (where Reba is filmed) down to the Commissary and Studio Store, it was designed as place employees could gather during lunch breaks, sit, eat, read and/or relax. Note the neatly trimmed lawns, the curbed plant beds, the carefully trimmed and maintained trees (ignore that high-rise in the background -- that's the MGM Building on Constellation. Big weinies. We hate them.) Anna left no stone unturned. Or did she?

Back in the olden days, when I was still chubby and Anna Murdoch was still the au current Mrs. Murdoch, my job then necessitated several trips from the Plaza to the Lot everyday. I was getting more nature than I knew what to do with back then; I just didn't know it. The day that construction of The Walk got interesting was the day they brought in some nature -- carefully sandblasted, cut to order, sanitized for our protection -- as, of course, all nature should be.

There are four such little seating areas along The Walk, all of them carefully delineated by these boulders, carefully placed so as to look as if some landslide had simply deposited them there by chance. It takes a lot of effort to make nature look so random. Just ask the crew of four flatbed trucks, two Bobcat dozers, and twelve workmen, all slaving away to place the boulders to the "just-so" specifications of Anna Murdoch and her landscape architect.

This is how Fox likes its nature. Nature here needs to be carved or trimmed or otherwise created in a controlled way, lest it break out of its designated borders and run roughshod all over the place. (Nature lesson #6: Nature must never be left to its own anarchic devices because its sneaky and if given an inch will take a mile.)

The Walk ends at the Fox Commissary, and today is (as I've mentioned) sushi day. But before we go in and secure our stash of cold, dead fish, let us take one last look at nature the way it was before we ever got here.

Behold, a group of plastic patio tables, gathered for a late morning graze. Huge herds of these noble beasts used to roam unmolested over the vast open prairie land of what is now Century City, Westwood and West Los Angeles, before the white man came and drove them to near-extinction with their incessant BBQs and weinie roasts. Now, only scattered small clusters remain to remind us of a time in our history before movie studios, trophy wives, multinational corporate moguls, feral cats and imported boulders shaped our environment. (Nature lesson #7: Anything can look like nature if viewed from the proper angle.)

Okay… I'm done…. Clearly, I need protein. I have a date with some cold, dead fish. At least these guys know their place -- they stay put in the tray and don't follow me around, like those damn koi fish.

~C~

Environmental Concerns - Journal Entry #1

I just finished a class called Environmental Landscapes. Part of the assignment in class was to observe the phenomenon of urban nature -- wildlife and nature as it exists in an urban setting -- and write journal entries about it, then send them to the professor. Since I'm kind of doubting he ever really read them (I do go on, after all), and because I'm busy with my MFA stuff (first packet due Jan. 21st), I thought I'd start posting them here, to keep the Naked Chicken fresh, and so's they shouldn't go to waste. Think of it as a sort of literary recycling, in keeping with the environmental theme.

10/07/05 -NEWPORT BEACH, CA

I have very little interest in surfing myself. I saw "Jaws" when I was fifteen and, though I'm told the odds of shark attack are minimal, I feel reasonably certain that remaining on the beach reduces one's chances to next to none. Also, the Pacific Ocean is freakin' cold. All year round. Wet suit, schmet suit. I am a morning person only to the degree that I can avoid being cold and wet before noon.

I do love to watch surfers surf, though. It comes from having friends, an ex-husband and ex-in-laws who surf(ed). It's a big ocean, and it's interesting to watch how people --especially large male-type people who are all well over 6'3" --try to tame or conquer it. Getting out past the breakpoint, where one is in a position to actually catch the wave seems to be about 70% of the work right there, because you're fighting the incoming waves all the way out. The sooner you can get belly onto board and start paddling out, the easier it is.

But today in Newport, it isn't the men that have caught my eye. For they are nearly all men today. Today, a family of three arrives --a father, his son who is (I'm guessing) around 17, and his daughter, who is 12, at most. At first, I don't even realize that she's a girl. Dressed in a black wetsuit, with boy-short pixie cut sun-bleached blonde hair, too young to exhibit any secondary sex characteristics, she could be a boy from the back. Then she drops her board on the sand so she can secure her ankle strap. The board is the tip-off --bright baby blue, with a cherry-hot pink heart painted in the center. I remember now that my ex-husband had urged my daughter to decorate her board with loud, easily spotted decals, so that if she wiped out and lost her board while they were surfing, he'd know immediately when the board popped to the surface without her.

The father and the son, who are about the same height, head straight out into the water, as all the other surfers have done so far. They barge through the incoming waves until they are waist-deep, then belly onto their boards and paddle out past the break. But our Mizz Thang can't do this. She weighs maybe 65 pounds and she is, at this point, soaking wet. The waves merely pick her up and toss her back to the beach, with little effort or ceremony. How is this tiny thing going to get herself into a position to catch a single wave, I wonder?

She stands knee-deep in the water, as the waves finish breaking and skid to a stop on the beach. She drops her board onto one of the spent waves and hops on it, riding it nearly to the end. Then she cuts back in toward the surf, catches the tail end of another wave, rides it out a bit, cuts back, and so on. She keeps doing this over and over, and I'm fooled at first into thinking this is what she's come here for. Then I realize. The waves come in and go out, and after a couple of minutes, she's managed to use the ocean against itself to get to the point where she can drop down on the board and paddle to the breakpoint, where her father and brother are waiting.

Did someone teach her this? Did someone show her that if she just used the ocean's own power to draw her out to sea, she wouldn't have to charge headlong into oncoming surf? Did someone teach her to compensate for the wicked riptide and undertow that hangs near the shore? Clearly, her father has had her on a board since before she could stand. Maybe he was once a 65-pound weakling, too, and he learned to master the ins and outs of the waves to help him get past the surf. Somehow, I don't think so. I think this very little girl has figured this out for herself. It seems, instead of fighting the ocean, she's found a way to make some peace with it, and to get it to cooperate with her. They both get what they want. The ocean gets to come and go as it pleases, and she gets a ride out past the waves.

A few minutes later, a really good wave begins to curl just in front of the breakpoint. I know it's a good wave, because five of the bobbing heads that have been sitting on their boards, letting the others pass them by, are now in hot pursuit of the wave. One by one, they drop away, acknowledging that this one isn't theirs, until only one remains. A flash of blue and a cherry-hot pink heart peak out of the curl as she rides the wave in --all the way in to the point where the surf stops short.

Then she drops the board on the dying surf, hops on and begins the patient work of letting the ocean pull her back out so she'll be ready when her next wave comes.

~C~