enjoy the first quarter of 2008 by having one new and fulfilling experience in January, February, and March

I had half a day off today, Friday. I was in the mood to do something a little different, so I decided to be a tourist in my own city, Los Angeles. I went to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of Grauman’s Chinese theater, where I rarely go. This is the place where certain entertainers have their handprints and footprints engraved in cement and where the sidewalks are covered with stars given to certain entertainers to have their names on the ground for everyone to step on and ignore as they walk down the street (unless it’s a really famous person’s star, like Matt Damon’s, whose name I bring up because I heard a girl say, “Oh my god, it’s Matt Damon’s star!”).

The most fun thing about going to these places is the people-watching. I heard an assortment of accents and languages. You hear this in LA already just from the people who live here full-time, but you can usually tell what a tourist looks like because they have their cameras out, they’re holding maps and looking a little lost, and they’re genuinely excited to see the sights which most of the locals could care less about. In fact, I kind of shudder when I think this is what people come to see when they go to LA. Hollywood has improved a lot in recent years, but it’s still kind of yucky… It must still be spring break or something because it was more crowded than I would have expected for an early afternoon on a weekday… But then again, I may not be a good judge of this since I hardly ever go there at all, much less on a weekday. I saw people swarming into over-priced souvenir shops, posing to take pictures with celebrity look-alikes and actors in Pirates of the Carribean costumes, and lining up to go on bus tours that take you past the stars’ homes. It was a nice day and people seemed to be enjoying it…

After having a little fun comparing my hand and foot size to some of the actors’ cement prints (I learned Ron Howard has big feet… well, bigger than mine), after a mere twenty minutes or so I had had my fill of being a tourist and decided to leave…

I live near a park where cherry blossoms bloom every spring. In the eight years since I’ve been living in my neighborhood I have never really taken the time to look at them. I’ve been aware of them every year, and I’ve even jogged around the perimeter of the park during prior springs when the trees have been in bloom, but for some reason I never thought to stop and see them. I decided that this year would be different. So, last Saturday I walked the couple of blocks to the park with my camera to finally see what I had been missing all these years.

When I got to the park, I saw that sure enough the trees around the lake were in full bloom and already slightly passed their peak. I wasn’t alone in wanting to see the flowers, as I saw lots of people with their cameras taking pictures of the trees and of themselves posing in front of the trees. I tried taking my own picture in front of the blossoms extending my arm out with my camera in my hand and aiming the lens toward me, but I just couldn’t get it right…

There was an interesting mix of people in the park that day. I don’t know what was going on, either there was some sort of high school thing with costumes or someone was having a medieval-themed birthday party, but the park was filled with teenagers wearing what I can best describe as Harry Potter style outfits. They seemed to be videotaping themselves near the trees. I saw one girl wearing this dress with a big hoop that kept popping up and she wasn’t wearing much underneath. She seemed embarrassed, and I guess I would have been too were in her place if I didn’t spend enough time in my outfit to realize there was a problem… I also saw some Japanese people wearing traditional Japanese costumes taking pictures near the trees. I think this is also the time of year for cherry blossoms in Japan. Maybe they were homesick for Japan and were trying to replicate a bit of home here in California…

It ended up raining Saturday night and Sunday was clear but very windy, so it was no surprise when I quickly passed through the park early this evening on the last day of winter (if it could really be called that in LA), I saw that most of the flowers were gone. I’m happy that I made it out on the last possible day to see them before it was too late and I would have to wait yet another year…

Now, as winter fades to spring, I also think about how I feel strangely more numb than I have in a long time and like I’m going back to a certain way of thinking and feeling that I last experienced maybe three years ago. Going back to something old, but from a different perspective, can itself be something new. I kind of think of it like being at your door in the morning ready to leave and face the world and then being back at your door again in the evening ready to return inside. You’re at the same place in the beginning and in the end, but for better or worse because of your experiences you’re not the same…

I’m known to be, and I’ve been told that I’m “intense and moody”. I admit I’m not a very upbeat person, I’m just not. Frankly, this is not something I can change that quickly, and I don’t know that I even want to change it entirely, but I do think that attempting to be at least a little more positive could have its benefits. So, I recently adopted this goal to list three things everyday that made me happy so that I could force myself to think about things that are positive and maybe affect my overall outlook on life.

I’ve learned a few things since keeping this goal. One is that the two single things that make me happiest are food and music. Even when life is otherwise stagnant these things can come to the rescue. The third thing, and the most fulfilling, is having some sense of accomplishment. Yet, recognizing that you can have happy moments during the day doesn’t necessarily mean that at the end of the day that you are happy overall, and some days it can be really difficult coming up with three things if the day was particularly monotonous or, as Melissa put it in one of her entries, “craptastic”. There’s no easy solution for changing your overall disposition, but I’ve found that doing this recognizes that at the very least you have survived the day and does force you to not just think on the negative…

I am distant from most of my family, even though most of them are within less than a two hour drive from where I live. I’ve always been this way, even when I was a kid I managed to get myself out of attending many family events; I just stayed home in my room reading books. I’m distinctly different from them and lack any real innate feeling of closeness with them. They ask how I’m doing sometimes, but it’s more out of a passing sense of curiosity rather than any genuine interest. I’m actually okay with this, and I don’t want to connect with most of them except for the cases I describe below. Even when I see my father, we’re usually happy to see each other but we struggle to find anything to talk about, and we never talk on the phone for that reason. I have two half brothers, whom, for complicated reasons I have not had much contact with since they were very young. We’ve been making efforts to reconnect now that they’re older and since we were brought closer together a couple of years ago when our mother was sick with cancer.

So, I drove up to my hometown of Ventura, California Saturday evening, last night. My half brother, who is 18 and a senior in high school, was performing in a one of three one act plays at his school. I had asked him to let me know when he would be performing and told him that I would make a special effort to see him when he did. He’s been in drama throughout his high school years but usually worked behind the scenes as a stage manager or director. This was his first time on stage as an actor. In the audience I sat next to my other brother, who is 20 and planning to become an aircraft mechanic, and his girlfriend. To be frank, I wasn’t expecting much out of a high school production, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed watching these plays. I was proud of my brother, who gave a good performance, and it was kind of weird seeing him on stage. But also, I was impressed in general by the quality of the acting and the amount of work all the students put into their performances.

I got to chat briefly with my brother after the play was over. He grabbed a book from his locker he had been reading that he wanted to show me. It was “Freakonomics”, and I smiled and told him I had read it. He knows I studied economics at university and is thinking about studied it too. His birthday was just last week, and I gave him another mixed CD; he seemed to like the ones I gave him previously. I told him when he was a junior that I’d take him on a trip someplace as a high school graduation present. I know he’s looking forward to it, and I think he wants to go to Hawaii. I look forward to it too, although I’m hoping I can convince him to go someplace a little more foreign. I’m hoping we will be able to use that trip as a time to reconnect and build a stronger bond.