I had, with regard to making the move, getting out the too much cold in winter and too much humidity in summer, a rare thing, for me, a positive attitude. It wasn't just about the weather, though. It was Los Angeles where I thought, as many have before me, that I could make my mark, as a television writer, with my then partner, Len Speaks. As I was driven around back then--I didn't have a license of my own yet--the scented streets (orange blossoms, jasmine, all of it), the palm trees swishing in the breeze, the cloudless cobalt blue sky, and the sunshine somehow different from that of New York, yes, all that cliche stuff, and the radio playing some favorite tunes that gave me optimism. In 1978, the tune of good omen, because of its spectacular sax and the only lines I could actually hear, "When you wake up, it's a new morning, the sun is shining, it's a new morning, you're going home," was "Baker Street" because it would pop up at what seemed to me strategic times during the visit. Actually the song is about depression and alcoholism, but well, the song was hot, the music was cool and I felt energized by it. By 1980 it was Steve Winwood, "When You See a Chance".
"When some cold tomorrow finds you.
When some sad old dream reminds you
How the endless road unwinds you
While you see a chance take it
Find romance
Fake it
Because it's all on you."
I finally saw a chance in 1981, after I passed the New York Bar, to make the move to Los Angeles, and I took it. By then the song that gave me a sense of optimism was from a television show, "The Greatest American Hero"--"Believe it or not, I'm walking on air; I never thought I could feel so free; flying away on a wing and a prayer; Who could it be? It's just me."
My partner didn't make the move then, and I hoped I could till the television writing ground while I studied for the Bar and got a job. I wrote a bit, beginning a spec script for Remington Steele, just as it was cancelled, and one for a favorite of mine, Cagney and Lacey, to keep my creative juices flowing. But I couldn't devote time to both writing and making a living. And life went in a different direction.
Where does Long Beach come into all this? Well, in the 1990s, I decided I needed to work out some of the neurotic quirks of my nature. I had taken a chance and though I wasn't a staff comedy writer at Twentieth Century Fox or Warner Brothers, I was reasonably successful in the career that I had, wisely, prepared for while I pined to be a Hollywood writer. I had a circle of West Coast friends and still had contact with a number of my East Coast ones. But, I had done less well in either finding romance, or faking it and my usually hidden version of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, full of catastrophic "What ifs" (which had manifested itself in various versions over my life but which I had managed with a combination of dismissal, denial and changing certain aspects of my daily life), was interfering with my ability to make decisions about pretty much anything. Not good for anyone, but particularly problematic if your job was being an ethics attorney. And when you do that sort of thing all the time, you get a little anxious and a lot depressed.
I began therapy at a location near LAX but when my therapist moved to Long Beach, I decided that the drive to a beach community was a nice complement to my appointments. After one of my last appointments, I had taken myself for lunch on Second Street, and as I walked on the street window shopping, I noticed that my hair looked particularly awful. I had parted ways with my prior hair stylist, not because she was in any way wanting, but because I had had a particularly bad experience with the salon at which she was then working. I walked into Effie and Company, begged for hair help, and was matched with Rosendo, who remains my hairdresser to this day.
It has always been like a day vacation when I go down there. Get my hair done. If the weather is invariably good, make a stop at an on beach or near to the beach locale for lunch. Often someone comes with me, my cousin, my aunt, a friend.
I had to cancel several appointments in the last few weeks due to other intervening activities. But today, I was able to go. Today, I needed to do it alone. No particular reason. It is a breezy, beautiful day, just like those days I was so aware of when I first came to California. I wanted to be able to blare the radio, and sing along. I even "forgot" my cell phone.
I found a new restaurant along Second Street, open only since August, Pietri's Bakery, Greek run, full of breakfasts, and pastry made on the premises, and a cheery shiny atmosphere. I saw on a side street this incense, crystal, chimes store on the side street and bought a few tchochkes I didn't need and then some cosmetics I also didn't need. Driving back along Ocean, amid the revving of the Grand Prix held once a year, I was alternating between the 60s on 6 or the 80's on 8 on Sirius Radio.
That feeling, the one I had when I was a 20 something first in Los Angeles began to overtake me, out of nowhere. Here I am free of the need to work, and I am not fully taking advantage of the opportunity to spend the time doing the type of writing I intended to do when I first moved to Los Angeles, but couldn't because I had a fully occupying my time job. That isn't an issue now. It hasn't been for quite a while.
I do not need to make a living at writing. I have to get over the idea that I need to succeed in any traditional way. That period of my life, happily, is over. I somehow lost track of that wonderful fact. I have always seen my life in terms of responsibilities. I have a few now, but they ought not, they need not be allowed to generate old anxieties. That's what Long Beach did for me today. Reminded me.
Yep, as I drove home first along Ocean, then to the 405, the wind quite truly blowing through my now messed up coif, I thought, maybe for the first time, truly, that today is a beginning, not a prelude to any end--which is my tendency to think as my glass half empty nature can be tamed, but apparently not eradicated.
So lots of songs popped up as I was rolling along, and the lyrics of another 80s classic caught my ear, Patti Labelle's "New Attitude".
"I'm feeling good from my head to my shoes
Know where I'm going
And I know what to do.
I tidied it up
My point of view
I got a new attitude."
I really was feeling good from my head to my shoes. That's a great thing.
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