pregnant clouds with blue streaks and sunbreaks. A Ramble

it's been rainining nightly for the past week in LA.....what this means is that there's NO smog to speak of. All week. clear skies and breathable air.

ahhhhhhh.....

the really significant event of the last week has been that I've spent a couple of sessions with a therapist and my dad.

This is not a light matter, as this was my dad's idea of how to work through an impasse we have been stuck at for the last couple of years. On the surface, it's about my sister, who's not very healthy, and how we each are dealing with her. Mostly, he does not want to admit just how sick she is, and is often resorting to giving me a huge guilt trip about never calling her to say hi (about 4 years ago, she told me she was going to say Kaddish for me, [Kadish for you Gentiles, is the Jewish prayer for the dead]) so suffice it to say that I'm not inclined to want to speak with someone very likely to attack me in such a vicious way, even if it is the sickness and not her doing the talking.

If you've never met my dad.... he believes in the science of psychology as much as he believes in the Trix Rabbit. just for him to suggest such a method of dealing had to cost him extreme amounts of pride.

so....I was sadly getting ready to put some serious distance between myself and my parents as a result of this aforementioned impasse... and then he makes this gesture.... I've spent some time thinking about what I have to say and where I can be more open and conciliatory.... and we're in the therapists office yesterday after speding the previous session laying out our feelings and issues, and I'm prepared to be pried open on some touchy sopts, when the Dr. turns to my dad and starts telling him that he needs to be respectful of my feelings in this issue, and how it's not healthy to be giving me a guilt trip anymore. And she keeps laying into him about this, and never once turns to me and tells me that I need to change.

While there is a part of me that feels 'RIGHT ON! I win!'.... the better part of me looks at this from the outside and says HEY! that's not fair!

hmmmmmm......

Now, I really do love my dad, he's an amazing person of incredible depth and loyalty, but I guess that for me it comes down to the appreciation of the poetic justice of the situation, that after all those years of my parents telling me how life's not fair, I am a party to forcing my very reluctant dad to be dealing with the same concept.


did I just make sense? it's all on the surface for me this week, so I'm inclined to ramble a bit more than usual.


Earth Out,

Sven X.

In fact that was me

in the front row of the Dokken/Whitesnake/Scorpions show at the Universal Amphitheatre last night. and yes, that was also me gloriously making the sign of the devil with BOTH hands and banging my head.

I mean, how could you not?

but here's the thing... heavy metal drummers truly are trolls. All three bands had short squat muscular drummers with heavily weathered faces.... watching the drummer for the Scorpions break a bottle of jack daniels over his head after his solo was a bit disturbing. no blood, he went right on playing.... It didn't look like breakaway glass, but who can tell for sure.

but hey, it get him chicks right?

so yesterday I headed out to the Glendale Galleria to buy a shirt for the party I was going to last night.

and I park my car, and walk about 100' inside the mall, and there's Diane Harrington (or Diane Anderson depending on if she changed her name when she got married, I don't remember)

Now, in the 10th grade I had the *biggest*, most hopeless crush on Diane. She was an amazing, lovely, caring person.... always ready with a 1000 Watt smile.

I've seen her maybe 3 times in the last 14 years.

and there she is with her 2 kids and Husband, Eric (her 11th Grade boyfriend)

So here life is, throwing you one of these FUCKING AMAZING COINCIDENCES, and the divergence of your lives (not to mention the crowded, noisy mall) over the past 14 years gives you little to do but make small talk for a couple of min.

So, Diane, this is for when you Google yourself:
Your kids are lovely, and the fact that you've not lost an iota of the inherent beauty and warmth that I relished when I met you 19 years ago... well, it's wonderful and elicits a rare sort of smile from me. Thank you.