sweetheart redux

my wedding -- Bill on the left mom and Bill Bill on the left I have not been sure if I should, or even could, write a tribute to my friend Old Bill, who died a few years ago, and whose birthday it is today.  I’ve known him almost my whole life.  My mom has always had a hard time taking care of herself, and he was pretty much her unofficial (as in, not a government-sanctioned public administrator) caretaker, out of love for her and kindness.  He picked me up from school every Friday to take me to mom’s work to pick her up, and then to drive us home.  I’ve gone over all of this before, but it’s so important to underscore again and again what a wonderful person he was.  There will never be anyone even close to him in this world again.  Me and mom called him Old Bill because she had another close friend we called Young Bill.  I thought it might hurt Old Bill’s feelings at one point, probably when I was 11, to have him referred to as “old”...

Biz http://bbbiiizzz.tumblr.com/ Robin and Geof Kelli kellicallis.wordpress.com Lindsey Joy Kim Burly   www.thealphablonde.com    Photo by Aurora Lady Photo by Jennifer Emerling

  my bedroom faces, college 1999 My mother, who doesn’t know what a selfie or Facebook is (she asked me if Facebook was really a book of faces , which it kind of is now) acts more like a troubled teenager than a grown woman.  Since I was a kid, I've seen the self-portraits she photographed whenever she was incredibly sad or smashed.  These were bummer pictures to see, of course, as her daughter, but I also admired how unabashed she was about them; they weren't hidden away in a box somewhere.  The one I remember most clearly, probably because I own it (she sent it to me when I was away at college ) is a photo she took just after she'd cut off all her beautiful long hair.  I also regularly took self-portraits when I was crying or really sad, when I was a teenager.  I liked how these photos looked and the idea that I'd created a work of art of sorts just by capturing myself in the act of crying; even as a young person, i was aware...

It used to drive me crazy that there was no way to live simultaneous experiences at once; this is what would give me a sense of longing when I used to be on buses or driving through neighborhoods in states I'd never been in before, and I would be lucky enough to look into someone's living room for a second if they had their curtains open, their lives on momentary display for me like the set of a play about the secret richness of the lives of common men. I'm a bo ring old bag now so I don't have those thoughts as often, but yesterday when I was stuck on Santa Monica Boulevard forever, I did get to wondering again about what the interiors of some of these wrecked-looking buildings looked like.  Like, what is the story with some of these places that I love to look at but will never have first-hand experiences with.  It occurred to me that with careful research I could at least figure out a little bit about these ghost-frequented Los Angeles mysteries. Gold Diggers ...

I was a 23 year old beauty, excited to have gotten a job as a mortuary/cemetery clerk at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Memorial Park, where the upper management were some of the worst people I've ever met and the internment services were conducted by rote – it was the McDonald’s of memorial parks:  “Oh, your young daughter just died of leukemia?  Fill out this paperwork and we'll call you up to the front desk when you're number is called.”   I lasted there for two and a half years before quitting -- it was an intense last conversation with my soon-to-be ex-boss.   "You're the only person who feels that I'm unfair," she said.   "Sorry, but that's completely not true.  Nobody would tell you what they think of you to your face, but they all hate you and think you're unfair and look forward to days you call in sick."  Then, I was unemployed for centuries, in a little suburb called Monrovia.  I was a substitute teacher, which brought ...