Los Angeles | Order of the Good Write

April 6, 2016
by Debi Rotmil Leave a comment

Emptying Drawers, Clearing Shelves

clarkstreetmerchantile

Last week, I sold a beloved nine drawer Spanish dresser my parents bought for me as part of a matching bedroom set for the new house they moved into while I was in college. It was for my room, the one I’d stay in while visiting, or as life would have it, lived in periodically throughout those years.

The dresser was hand carved, heavy oak wood, beautifully polished into a lustrous golden smooth shine. The knobs on each drawer were dark iron metal, fastened to square bevels carved into the front panels. The square motifs continued down the sides of the piece. It was the center piece of an ensemble: End tables, bed head board and an additional little side bureau that completed the delicate rustic uniform that contained the same bejeweled hand carve squares.

The thing about the lovely dresser is that it always remained at my parents home, even after I moved out. Living in NYC, my early days proved difficult in terms of finding a large enough apartment to accommodate furniture of this size to my new dwelling. In fact, earning enough to have a larger space and bringing all this furniture with me, to use (you know, like a civilized person, where you have drawers to keep your clothes rather than pile them up in a deep shelf in the one and only closet you have in your loft studio apartment) was to be an achievement worth striving for.

When I was able to afford a one bedroom, my father felt a sense of pride and accomplishment when I was able to bring my pretty bedroom furniture and that big dresser to my new place. It was as if I arrived. I grew up.

Then, something happened. My folks passed away and I saw how all their own heavy furniture was a burden I had to dispose of. How they cherished these things I could not use and were in need of being sold off, auctioned off, or sadly – left on the curb.

And I realized, as I moved from place to place, how cumbersome this giant dresser was to transport. It cost so much to move. There were hallways too narrow and ceilings too low to lift it and bring it into certain rooms. When I moved to LA, this dresser – all 200 pounds of it – made relocation costs more expensive than I anticipated. It rolled across the country, waiting to meet me on the other side, ready with new intention and experiences, only to find it wouldn’t fit in the bedroom of my small one bedroom LA apartment. So, it lived in the living room until I moved into a larger LA deco apartment, where I currently live. It looked perfect, beautiful in this LA pad, perfect for the sunny weather and spanish feel of Los Angeles style. I’ve been in the LA area 5 1/2 years, and the dresser settled in.

Yet, here’s the rub.

I want to go home.

I want to move back to NYC soon. No real date, but soon. A goal post – by this autumn.

This dresser can’t come back with me. It’s too heavy. It’s too expensive to relocate with (as history has shown me) and I want to travel light, as unencumbered as possible without giving it all away.

So, I sold it last week. I let it go. Thirty years of memories, of homes and family experiences kissed goodbye and hopefully blessed over to the next owners.

I don’t feel lighter. I have boxes and boxes temporarily filled with what used to be the contents of those drawers.

Donate. Throw out. Keep. All categorized, yet I can’t think straight with each toss of an old tee-shirt.

The space looks like I’m in mid-packing mode, yet I haven’t locked down the destination of this end chapter of the journey.

After the delivery guys came to pick up the dresser – that night, I woke up from sleep (as I usually do) and laid awake until I could drift back to dreamland. In the middle of meditative state and twilight, I thought I heard my father’s voice call my name through the din and electrical current of some cosmic frequency.

In my mind I could only tell him I love him, and that it was time to come back home, to the city that was the main pulse of the region where I was born, back to the familiar, back to east coast time, back to what I know. Not to move backwards, but to move forward with a new perspective back home.

And I’ll return with a little less baggage.

August 4, 2015
by Debi Rotmil 2 Comments

A Murder of Crows

birds and cage

The neighborhood I live in is void of birds. It’s strange. Especially in summer. Raised on the east coast, my summers would entail early morning bird song outside my window. Hermit Thrust, Sparrows, Bluebirds – they would congregate beyond my bedroom curtains straight to the back yard. I wasn’t Snow White singing to little angelic birdies perched on my finger while we whistled in tune. But they were around, and I would fall into dozy afternoon snoozes in the heat of the day to the hypnotic sound of birds. Mix that with the rattle of cicadas sitting in trees and grass, and I had myself a summer – a dreamy one at that.

But here in the area of Los Angeles where I live, there is a stillness in the air. Faint bird song is interrupted by the grouchy collective craw of a murder of giant black crows who’ve claimed their stake in this territory. They are ominous. They are either chasing away the song birds or they are having it out with a pandemonium of parrots who screech through, hoping to inhabit a giant sycamore tree over on Irving and 4th Street.

That is one of the first things I noticed when I moved to L.A. five years ago. Birds, sweet tweeting singing birds – are scarce. There is a silence interrupted by the sound of a speeding car, a crazy terrier barking with ear bleeding frequency, or the hissing of many dried palm leaves slapping together.

And then you hear the craw and guttural vocal rattles of crows. They are everywhere. The scavenger bird. A murder waiting for a murder so they can swoop in to feed on the dead animal carcass. I can hit you over the head with the obvious Hollywood metaphors and correlations, but the imagery speaks for itself. Murder. Scavengers. Running the goodness out of town.

The crows must have chased all the sweet singing birds away, leaving random undeterred little birds singing faintly and prancing on hot pavement to branches, not giving into the crow’s eviction notice. Neither are those screeching Parrots perched on telephone wires, cackling together like chatty old ladies talking about the price of groceries. They stick together, holding on with their strength in numbers.

Indeed, the state of California is filled with majestic birds – the commodore, loons, boobie and gannets, gulls and ducks galore. The state bird is the California Quail. They must soar and sing in Northern California where the air is cool and nature is allowed to flourish.

But in this highly populated and preening part of the state – with lack of watering holes and plentiful scavengers – these creatures are turned away. Much like young hopefuls are turned down from roles in commercials, a television pilot or film.

There are peacocks in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. They are kept under the care of groundskeepers. If crows get to them, they will be shooed away. Or at least I think they will. There’s enough death in that space for a murder of crows. Enough sadness to fill a field with birds singing. But they don’t sing. Peacocks don’t have a song. They mustn’t wake up the dead.

Here is how you refer to different groups of birds:

A murder of crows.

A pandemonium or company of parrots.

A dule of doves.

A flock of birds.

A brood of chickens.

A siege of cranes.

A mob of emu.

A gaggle, skein or flock of geese.

A cast or kettle of hawks.

An exultation of larks.

A richness of martens.

A charm of finches.

A convocation of eagles.

A brood of hens.

A hedge of herons.

A tiding of Magpies.

A sord of mallards.

A muster or ostentation of peacocks.

A bouquet or nest of pheasants.

A parliament of owls.

A host of sparrows.

A pitying of turtledoves.

A mustering of storks.

A rafter of turkeys.

A descent of woodpeckers.

A fall of woodcocks.

An unkindness of ravens.

…and A covey of partridges (in a pear tree).

chirp…

(Source: A Group of Critters -> http://home.comcast.net/~ray.ammerman/groups.html )

July 8, 2015
by Debi Rotmil Leave a comment

This Wicked Little Town

Photo by Matthew Wiebe – https://unsplash.com/matthewwiebe

Oh, New York – I miss your heat and your humidity, your snowstorms and sub-degree temps. I miss rainfall and clouds, grass that really grows from the ground, not installed like living carpet on the dry and barren patch of front lawn, sucking up water from sprinklers that shouldn’t be on because of the drought, creating a modern day dust bowl.

I miss Riverside Park and Union Square. University Place and Bleecker. The City Bakery. ABC Home. Chelsea Market. UCBNY on 26th and 8th. Broadway.

I miss your weird smells and pungent odors. You pace, your energy.

I miss my trigger fast pace of filling my Metrocard with money as I hear the train roar into the station, and swipe it at the turnstile, just crossing over to make it through the closing door before the “ding dong”.

LA – nice try on public transport, but your buses need bus lanes. Your drivers need to know the right of way and that the stick attached to their steering wheel is a directional, telling the drivers yonder if they’re making a left of a right. Oh, and how they love to speed up alongside you to pass you. Ah, the competition, the lack of consideration, getting ahead and not letting others know where you’re going. Driving here is like a casting call. Bless the kind drivers who do exist. And they do.

Five years ago, when NYC burned me out and I set my radar for LA, I used to constantly quote James Murphy, who sang, “New York I love you, but you’re bringing me Down”.

It’s now the other way around.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to be in LA. I love my pretty apartment and my nice car, my peace and quiet, my lovely red headed hound dog.

LA’s skies are always deep blue, turning into dark dreamy skies at night. Skies where Venus shines so bright next to Jupiter I thought it was a man-made satellite until I Googled, “What is the brightest star on the western horizon?”

I open my blinds at night to gaze at that sky where “stars hang like grapes”, as the great Woody Guthrie once wrote in “California Skies”. Woody – he wasn’t fooling.

My LA life is blessed with wonderful friends I’ve made for life. Neighbors who’ve brought me joy, and taught me lessons about adversity and happiness.

Five years of no winter provided a perfect respite from 46 years of frozen fingers, icy slush, shoveling, sweating, bad hair and deeply depressing late winter low light.

Yet, I miss the gorgeous feeling of winter turning to spring and then summer and then fall. When you handle such contrasts – you’re more grateful and more in the moment when a crocus comes fighting through the thawing earth.

While I’ve been gone, the new World Trade Center was built. As a very young child, I saw the old one go up and in adulthood, saw them come crashing down on a Diamondvision board in Times Square, as I was running home that horrible day.

While I’ve been gone, Hurricane Sandy roared through, destroying my home town and bringing folks together in ways not seen by outsiders of this city.

I think of California in song. Jackson Browne, Joni MitchelI singing about California and their lives defined by the landscape, the mythology of this western plane. I may have driven through Laurel Canyon many times, and rolled down the Sunset Strip – but I never really drove up the 101 without someone else at the wheel.

I never really called the road my own.

California, I’ll never “kiss a Sunset pig” and it’s okay if you don’t “take me as I am”.

I am grateful for everything in my life. I live in the moment, never running from the present, always keeping the faith that I’ll be back in New York permanently at the right time in the right way with grace and purpose.

I love you LA, and will one day be a visitor again, but at least I’ll be able to go back home to New York – where I can watch my beloved NY Mets lose on east coast time.

New York, you are a wicked little town. I’ve used two wishes like a fool, and I’m going to be very careful how I use the third.

June 10, 2015
by Debi Rotmil Leave a comment

May Gray, June Gloom

Paramount Studios. Filtered in black and white to accentuate the gloom.

“I had some dreams there were clouds in my coffee
Clouds in my coffee…” Carly Simon

So here we are, in the midst of a Southern Californian June Gloom. We’ve past the May Gray right into the bad hair days of early summer.

I’m an east coast person. It’s in the blood. Having lived in Los Angeles for almost 5 years, it will never leave me. When it’s cloudy and gloomy in other places of the country – like New York – it usually means rain. Not here. Gloom means gloom until the sun burns it off later in the morning, when dark skies turn to crystal clear and cloudless blue. But in June, it takes a little longer for the clouds to disperse. Sometimes, they don’t push off at all.

Yet, as many Californians know, there is a price to pay for the beautiful weather year round. Drought, and earthquakes, of course. But how about the Marine Layer that won’t quit. Spitting rain. Moody clouds on the horizon, obscuring the mountain range that’s part of the landscape. It hovers like a lazy friend who hangs out at your house but doesn’t leave until afternoon when half your day is over.

And yes – May Gray is also a thing. We can back it up to last month and remember the premiere to the gloom that would become June. The clouds didn’t linger as long, but they appeared early in the day, reminding us that May flowers in Southern California really bloom in March, and the heady aroma of Night Blooming Jasmine and Lily trees has long faded into an early morning soup of low lying cloud coverage that will turn more intense once we turn the calendar page.

The Gloom sets a pallor on the day. At least it does for me. I wake up sleepy, less enthusiastic to attend to a really nice, productive day ahead of me. The mist weighs me down like a force. Call it Mercury in Retrogade (which ends tomorrow, by the way) – but I’m stuck in a muck. Clouds in my head. Clouds in my coffee.

But we’ll break through. Much like the gloom, the sun usually burns it off later in the day. Even if it doesn’t go, there will come a day later in the week where the sun will shine. Nature’s ying and yang.

April 28, 2015
by Debi Rotmil Leave a comment

New York Dreamin’

Oh, Los Angeles – I really love you. I do. But I think we’re nearing the end of this relationship. Maybe not yet, but soon.

Don’t be pissed off. You’re amazing.

When I wake up in the morning, I see your bright sunny face in the window. You never turn off that blue sky and sunshine. All year round, it’s sunny and pleasant on your side of the bed, and for that – I am forever grateful.

You gave me warmth during the winter when I used to shutter from the bitter cold blowing off the Hudson River.

You smell like hickory chimney smoke almost every night when the temperatures dip into the 50’s, coming from the fireplaces of houses near by. It mixes with the aroma of Night Blooming Jasmine and the fragrance from those trees that sprout yellow blossoms smelling like heavenly perfume.

The skies are dark blue at night, with a moon rising and hanging above more vibrant and closer to Earth than it appears in New York.

It’s weird. Everyone has the moon in their eyes here – with stars on the brain. The sun bleached sidewalks and the sharp sun dried walls of California houses, cutting sharp against the angle of blue against a daylight sky. Purple prose for a very yellow sunshiny life.

Your sunshine brings people outside. Dogs, cats and people. We all converge on the sidewalks, chatting and befriending in ways one hardly does in New York. I’m grateful for that.

Your glamor brings out the dreamers with baggage – lots of baggage. Samsonite. Moving vans. Old cars packed with personal belongings, sometimes used as makeshift homes parked by the curb. Litter, mostly comprised of take out remains, are left on the street in the gutter for our dogs to sniff through when we’re not looking.

Some bring brain baggage – a different type than the New York style (which is in your face, with a big side of fuck you). Daddy issues, mother complexes, narcissism, defensiveness, aloofness, the need to transfer personal problems on to you when you’re just minding your business.

Traffic and vehicular etiquette is a culmination of this, where left hand turns are impossible. Where people don’t let you go because they need to go first. Where drivers don’t even put their directional blinkers on because they aren’t thinking about you, nor do they care to show you the consideration. Not everyone is like this. And I’m no angel. But the behavior behind the wheel pervades here – and that sparks the road rage we all hear about.

Pedestrians don’t even know how to walk here. They enter crosswalks like they are entering the red carpet. Strutting purposefully slow, talking to their equally slow partner or reading a text on their phone. Oh, are is there a line of cars waiting to make a turn before the red light goes on? Who the fuck cares? I’m walking and you must wait and watch me.

You may laugh, but I’m beginning to believe the collective personality of a given society can be measured in how they drive and how they walk in traffic. Slow. Thoughtless. Only they exist. Not you.

Everyday, your sunshine, once warm and beautiful, now blinds me. I can’t have a quiet Sunday indoors to decompress without the sun shining, taunting me to go outside and drive somewhere. Hike somewhere. Do this. Enjoy that. Bask in the glory of this gorgeous day. This introvert is exhausted. I just want a cozy, rainy day.

But everyday is gorgeous. Almost every. Single. Day.

No rain.

Well, hardly any – with a short sprinkling from the sky, or perhaps a day of soaking rain that does not make up for four years of dry weather.

California’s perfect weather hides a dirty secret – and it’s not a sex scandal in a Beverly Hills mansions somewhere. It’s drought.

The drought began a few months after moving here over four years ago. Within the first month, I was soaked to the bone, everyday pour rain with an intensity I’ve only seen on the east coast in the form of late day summer thunder drenchings. For a while there, I thought I had moved to Seattle. But then it all stopped.

Oh Los Angeles, you took my money and a little bit of my old New York rhythm and blues.

I want to quote Billy Joel here, and claim I’m in a New York state of mind. Because I am.

So, don’t be sad, L.A. I’ll be back. I left New York four and a half years ago when I was low and on my knees. It’s time to get my NY residency back. But I’ll return every year when the winter starts to kill me.

In the words of Paul McCartney, I want to “get back to where I once belonged.”

April 8, 2015
by Debi Rotmil Leave a comment

New York-Los Angeles Bicoastal Serenade

Right now, I’m sitting in the heart of Hollywood, in the middle of one of the most storied studios in Los Angeles, taking a break from a morning deluge of work. The latest edition of the Hollywood Reporter is on my desk – the New York Issue. Just seeing it makes my heart ache. Louis CK is on the cover, the consummate poster boy of New York entertainment. Receding red hair, bundled in a black coat, the photo shows him crossing a Manhattan street, looking at the camera with a stoic CK smirk – as if he’s saying, “Yup. I’m home. I belong here.”

The entire issue is a portfolio of famous New York talent and creators who’ve chosen to stay in the Big Apple over moving to the drought stricken sunny land of Los Angeles. They’ll endure the constant barrage of horrendous winter weather and frigid cold temps to stay where the rubber meets the road, where the energy of NYC lives in their blood. Even though I left for warmer climes – I don’t blame them.

I was in love with New York City all my adult life. I grew up in what they call a “bedroom community or suburb” of New York City. Westchester County. When I was a child, New York City was bankrupt, crime was everywhere, and you couldn’t go into town without some scary dude trying to squeegee your windshield while you were held prisoner at a stop light. It was bedraggled, dirty and mean. It scared the hell out of me. But it was thrilling. Especially when I reached high school and was old enought to train it down with my friends Gina and Laura so we could walk Greenwich Village and absorb the funk coolness of it all.

Still, New York City was the heartbeat of my town. You could feel its pull. It was palpable – that living, breathing organism of energy sizzled twenty minutes south. The gritty streets. The cool and scary people. The humming of Time Square. Broadway. Media. Food. Art. Knowledge. Many people feel this. Ricky Gervais has often mentioned that when he comes to New York (he’s made it his second home), he always feels a catch in his throat. It’s visceral. Perhaps the Native Americans who first inhabited the island placed a spiritual blessing on the place, ultimately making it the touchstone for many wayward people. The hearth where distant travelers come to find a new life of peace and freedom. “Give me your tired, your poor”. The place where artists long to create, or the weary find solace in its crumbling buildings. It’s like a calm in the midst of a global storm. The vortex or force field to where everyone eventually gravitates, until it sucks them in, saps their energy, and spits them out.

Then you fall out of love with New York.

Being inside the energy field of New York City makes one realize that the awesome thrill is good in doses.

When you’re young, you come to New York City to have your New York City days. Not many people stay. They marry or grow up a little and move on to spacious homesteads. Only the very wealthy or well tuned New Yorker stays a lifetime. But when you’re the intrepid NY dweller, you tend to leave. You’ve had enough of scraping by in a studio apartment – or slumming with roommates.

The high rent. The small apartments. You sacrificed space and civility to have your own spot on the island – where you “stuff” is – where you lay your head. You got into the groove – as you make your way through the masses, getting so good in catching the subway, you time the rumble of a distant train perfectly as you run down the stairs, add money to your Metrocard in time to jump on the train moments before the doors slide shut. But you get to a point when you want your own space when you travel. You’re tired of breathing a stranger’s breath.

I fell out of love with NYC several years ago when I couldn’t stand waiting for the 6 Train anymore. I fell out of love when CBGB’s closed and The Bottom Line shut down. The energy of NYC that once filled me up with positivity – got to me. It was in my face everyday – from the moment I walked out the door. I’d step on the sidewalk to join the parade of pedestrians walking from York to Lexington just to get the train. I was just another ant marching.

I used to leave NYC on weekends and head to my folks house up in Rockland County, and then again in Westchester when they moved back. They both passed away within the same year, and the virtual umbilical cord from NYC to the leafy homestead up north was now severed. No more breathers from the stifling New York existence. No more home cooked meals and family connection. I was free to the wind, but left with no outlet out of the city.

I needed green patches of peace – where I could swing my arms around and not hit a wall or knock off a book from a shelf. Space. I wanted space. I wanted sunshine. I wanted…no more winters. I wanted more than just one room to live in.

I fell in love with Los Angeles. The comedy scene, the media, the hullabaloo, the underground world of vintage bohemian beauty hidden away from the glitz of Kardashian type shallowness. There’s a ragged beauty to LA that you really fall in love with.

It’s been almost five years, and my life in Los Angeles has been a remarkable one. I’ve worked for an entertainment database company – then for an Oscar/Emmy nominated production company – temped at a major studio in Culver City – and now at this amazing studio in the heart of Hollywoodland. I have a gorgeous hound who makes my heart sing. I’ve made friends with more neighbors than I ever did in New York. My mindset has shifted with positive action steps toward productivity and creativity. My life is changing for the better here.

Yet, I dream of NYC. I sense the spiritual changes being sculpted in LA are preparing me for returning to New York a better person. I don’t want to leave LA, but I want to live in New York too. There will soon come a time when I will be fully bi-coastal – where I will live my dream of having the best of both worlds.

So, I sit and read the New York issue of The Hollywood Reporter and I live my NY life vicariously through the talent featured: Diane Sawyer looking out her CBS office at the familiar view. Gayle King and Robin Roberts with the Manhattan Bridge (or is it the Queensboro? I’m never sure) in the background, and Larry Wilmore striking a Statue of Liberty pose with an ice cream cone as his torch – it’s all bringing me back home. All that good stuff still humming back home. Yes. Home. I’ll always call New York home. In fact, I’m going back next month.

Hopefully one day soon – I’ll be like Louis CK – living back in NYC, bundled against the cold with a smirk on my face that says, “Yup. I’m here in New York City and I belong here.”

March 26, 2015
by Debi Rotmil Leave a comment

The Freeway Ain’t Free

I have a fear of the freeway. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for almost five years now, and I will not drive on the 101 or the 5 or the 10. I fear them. They are hissing snakes of crazy cars – a whirlpool of drivers who go fast – who hate you – who will ride up your ass when you’re going 70 miles an hour. I can drive the New York State Thruway and every Parkway across the New York Trii-State area – but I will not drive the Freeways of California. It’s like taking one’s life in your hand and then smashing it alongside a guard rail.

Oh – I’ll let someone else drive me. But I cannot handle the speed as I take the wheel, the wayward highway to nowhere – the fear of not knowing an exit. A lack of direction. I still can’t find north. My compass has changed since my move from the east coast. It’s direction now spinning, confused. The ocean is on the other side of my brain.

I hate the Freeway. If I have to go to the Valley, I will take the surface streets. I’ll take Cahuenga to Barham. I’ll wait in traffic. I’ll take Laurel Canyon, where the twisting turns of backed up cars leave you unable to see what’s ahead. You are the snake that’s hissing, the long bending road lined with rocks and houses, buildings on stilts and memories of Charles Manson, Mickey Dolenz, Jim Morrison, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Mitchell. If I go up this rock and roll mountain to the flats of the other side, I’ll start off seeing the old Country Store, and think of crystal beads and mobiles, incense and Indica, naked groupies and lone stoners looking for home. Where are those burned out babes and washed out music god wanna be’s today? Pushing a cart down a street? Running a bank? Bouncing a grandchild on their knee? Dead?

I always thought living in Manhattan was a grind. The subway, the dirt, the crush of the morning commute. When I moved to Los Angeles, I wasn’t seeking any fortune or fame. I was looking for Spring, Summer and Fall – no winter. I was looking for a a new way of life, where I could take my car and go anywhere – despite never wanting to drive on the freeway. Now – even the pretty weather is tiring. The heat – relentless. The people – deep, thoughtful- all out of towners like me who just wanted a new life in the sun.

Now, I envy the folks back home, shedding the dreary winter for that wonderful feeling of spring as it stirs. The feeling of warmth breaking through the cold. I’ll take spring after a bad winter any day over a spring after a season of drought and summer-like heat.

Tomorrow, I go to the other side – Sherman Oaks. I’m not used to the valley and the mysterious oasis of the other side – over the mountain. I only know Burbank and Toluca Lake, yet my car is set for whichever way is best along the Google Map warnings and the way I feel. I leave myself a lot of time.

The Freeway isn’t so free. It’s backed up for miles. So maybe the hissing snake will be quiet with the bumper to bumper traffic – but I won’t give in. I’m a New Yorker in Los Angeles and frankly – I want to go home. I love the beautiful weather in the dead of winter, and I want to go home. I love the friends who greet me like nobody does in New York, yet I want to go home. I love the incredible Southern California skies that turn baby blue and pink at twilight, and I want to go home. The stars aren’t as plentiful as in other less dense places, but the ones you can see – they hang like diamonds. The crescent moon is sharp, like the charm on those bracelets I used to wear as a child, the northern star perches nearby – almost like that second earring in your second piercing on your lobe. The Pacific Ocean is blue like heaven, whereas the Atlantic is green like life. I want to go home.

All this lamenting doesn’t mean much. I miss New York, and plan on moving back in a few years. I miss living in a place where I’m from. But I’ll never leave Los Angeles. I’m working on a life where I can live – somehow- in both places. New York – Los Angeles. A little of the milk and honey, dipping into the best of both worlds.

Dreams are like those hissing cars on the 101 – they’re scary. But in pursuing them, I’m not going to take the surface roads. I’ll forge ahead until I’m up the ass of someone going 70, and go around, much like the BMW’s and Mercedes driven by those who don’t know what a left or right hand signal is.

February 9, 2015
by Debi Rotmil Leave a comment

Foggy LA Morning

“There’s a fog upon LA,

And my friends have lost their way…”

‘Blue Jay Way’ – Words and music by George Harrison

We had a foggy morning in Los Angeles today. Not smog. Fog. Real dewy, low laying clouds. LA gets a bad rap for its air quality, but things have improved in the last thirty years. Now when you can’t see beyond several yards, it’s a force of nature until the winds change and the sun burns through the mist.

If you’re a writer, you’re constantly dealing with the fog when you’re in the midst of writing a book, article, or blog. Nothing makes you want to bang your head against the desk more than handling the mist of nothingness clouding your once crystal clear vision.

But the problem with our own personal fog, is that we tend to create it ourselves. I’m super guilty of blaming my brain for the brick wall of futility holding back those pearls of awesome dripping from my imagination onto the keyboard on a particular day (or a succession of days – even weeks). That blame game can be the root of one’s futility. We put it there by saying, “I can’t write because I’m not a good writer,” or “Why bother when nobody is going to read or publish it anyway,” or “I have nothing to write about.” Nothing can be further from the truth. Really. Drop kick those beliefs down the street into manhole.

It’s alright to go easy on ourselves and take a break from the daily grind of writing to fill up our shoe with some living. Sometimes we do run aground in creating those pearls of story from our brains. We’ve used up our well of ideas, and now it’s time to fill up our empty imagination with books, museums, movies, music, or just hanging with your friends and chill. Yet, when we have done all this, and blank brain prevails, you have to push through by ignoring the fog and letting your fingers do the work. Just say, screw it and blah blah blah your monitor screen until you get a thought.

I do it all the time. I’m not perfect. There’s self doubt, laziness, too many projects at work that sap my brain energy from focusing on the thing I love the most – writing and working on the foundation of my consulting business where I want to help others writers write. Nevertheless, I cannot succumb. I can take a break, but I have to keep my eyes on that glorious goal.

Don’t fall for the “nope, not feeling it” thing for too long. Remember, not feeling it is just part of the process. There will be days when you don’t really have the flow to produce useable work. There are productive days and crap days. On the crap days, show up anyway. Screw the resistance that tries to put you in a place of frustration. Put down about 500 words of nothing until you start writing about the cup of coffee you had this morning, or how the chatty coffee clan who sit in front of the Coffee Bean everyday were noisy, or how they ignored your dog. Then suddenly, you’ve taken “a nothing day, and suddenly made it all seem worthwhile.” (I’ve been watching a lot of Mary Tyler Moore reruns). It will not only open up the fog, allowing you to see the light on where you need to go on your book, but it might be the germ of story you can write months from now, when the sky in your head is clear and bright.

But like the weather. Understand the clouds. Be the wind and the barometric pressure. Don’t be hard on yourself. Just try to allow positive thoughts to flow like cool, clear high pressure fronts. Even if you can’t do this, try to rise above negative or heavy thoughts and sit down to write. Write anything. Sometimes putting down 500 words of crappy thoughts will flourish into something awesome.

October 17, 2014
by Debi Rotmil 3 Comments

Fall in Los Angeles

You can find Autumn in Los Angeles. You just have to look for it. Amid the green trees and freshly layered sod, you can turn a corner and find an entire street lined with deciduous trees, turning brown and yellow, shedding leaves until winter hits and the entire avenue looks like something out of your east coast/mid-west suburban winter memory. Then you can turn another corner to find palm trees and ficus trees growing like it’s summer time where barbeques are smoking and canon balls are splashing down in a pool.

Fall is my favorite time of year. The chill in the air, the early nights of deep, long shadows that create a lovely feeling in the brain. Nesting, holidays, baking – suddenly we’re seeing jack-o-lanterns and fake web on bushes, and Halloween candy in stores, and the excitement of the onset on Pumpkin Spice season – as touted in the latest Trader Joe’s “Fearless Flyer”.

This is the time of year when I miss New York the most. I envy my east coast friends who are relishing in the “mist and mellow fruitfulness” of the season back home. Yes, they are looking ahead to a tough, cold, snowy winter – but after two years of scarce rain, lack of clouds and no snow in SoCal – I would kill for one flake of snow. (Okay, maybe a light snowfall.)

I left the east coast for the west four years ago because of those horrible NY winters, and yes – my home state got socked with exceptionally bad storm fronts since I left town. But as one LA sunny day folds into another, as one week turns to month after month of no substantial rain, I find the constant state of nothingness in the climate almost deadening. The sun is blinding. The air dry. The sky always blue – providing a surreal world of perfection to the point where another gorgeous sunny day is mockery. It’s becoming scary. The ground and trees on the hiking trails at Griffith Park are bone-dry parched. The smell of dry cedar and dust particles clog your nose and get down your throat. The heat index can rise up into the hundreds, burning the dry soil, baking what were once moist, water filled streams that used to bubble up from the mountains. The sweet, dry smell of heated wood makes you feel that one strike of a match could cause the whole forest to ignite.

Weather. How I miss you. I need the turmoil of a late day summer thunder drench. The soul needs to be fed with the mixture of season, the drudgery, and the welcoming beauty of all that waiting and freezing and dry sky – to find that warm spring ozone air breaking through on a March afternoon. The happiness caused when noticing a crocus poking out of the dark, barren earth. Turning around and seeing a forsythia bush flourishing yellow blooms within the dead brown branches and bark of winter – which is slowly, slowly turning into spring as the promise of green leaves, warm weather, shedding socks and boots for barefeet and flip flops becomes real. Then it’s wonderful, wondrous summer! The season you’ve earned after shoveling snow and suffering frostbite from waiting at the train station. Summer – when Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime” makes you weep for joy at the memory of summers past you can relieve in the splash of the pool and the incredible coconut smell of Coppertone.

You don’t get that in LA. It’s always nice – always pleasant. It gets chilly, and you can imagine for just a moment, being back home under the red leaves of an autumn maple tree. You can feel safe in the warm pocket of southern California sunshine when you hear the rest of the nation is buried under ten feet of snow. But one season folds into another – and you wonder if going back into the thick of winter blues may be worth it.

[written in a morning funk kind of stream of conscious kind of way so grammar be damned]