Courtney Elkin

I roll down all my windows, enjoying the slightly cooler temperature of the start of fall, roll down my sunroof, push my driver-side seat back a few inches. Appreciate the view, the absolute hugeness of this sprawl. I let my body sway with each canyon turn and smile, despite myself. As much as I can criticize not only this city, but also the length of time I have spent here, there’s no denying the incredible memories I have of this place. I can remember the actual night it happened, Courtney pixie-girl falling in a star-crossed love with the City of Angels, such a strange misnomer for a place so soulless. But if you can find love in a land that invention itself created, against the laws of nature, with the power of water-moguls making it so, and on the labor of millions of hopeful stars, than I suppose LA has a soul of its own…one whose auspicious beginnings, oddly enough, guarantee its continuance.

Speeding down Beverly Glen, like all the canyons, a green oasis promising a small break from the smog, a few bird calls, and splendid, unique looking homes, I blasted “Tiny Dancer,” which always makes me happy to be driving - almost flying really - today into Westwood, land of my LA homebase, UCLA. Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man. Maybe because of my bad eye sight, or because I almost never watch TV, I have never really found myself star-struck here. I was never the one who wanted to go out to the Sunset Strip clubs for my birthday, or for drinks at MoonShadows in Malibu. Rodeo basically disgusts me, and there isn’t anything there I can afford anyway. To be fair, I did have a brief obsession with the LA indie music scene, and even hosted an internet radio show for a summer, but that came to an abrupt end as soon as I started cocktailing at a live music venue/hipster club in Hollywood and saw the scene for what it was: the disillusioned, apathetic, over-privileged youth with time on their hands to wander through bins at Goodwill or surf for “Vintage Converse” on E-bay and under-tip their over-worked waitresses, who sorta can play the guitar or drums.

I used to blast that song at the Brite Spot, the trendy all night diner I waited tables at for the past year and half. We’d get the most random, fabulous crowds of misfits: the hippest of the hipsters, drunk or determinedly sober with their comrades drinking black coffee and vegan country fried soy chicken dinners, groups of Episcopal priests sitting next to biker-dike lesbian couples, hardcore tip-stealing Rastafarians waiting for Dub-Club to commence at the Echo (rock club) next door, church-going families, lonely men and women who got the feeling of Cheers when they would walk through our orange and puke green doors. I loved that job, and this Wednesday when I work that counter for the last time, serving coffee and lentil soup to my handful of regulars, I know it will be more bitter than sweet. The Brite Spot’s been good to me. My friends have been good to me. School has been good to me, although I tend to forget that UCLA was even attached to my more recent LA experience. The sun and beach and hills, at times, have been very good to me too.

Perhaps this entry seems cynical of me, and little unoriginal too. After all, everyday people are packing up and leaving LA, and feeling all sorts of feelings about the time they spent here, and what will come of saying goodbye and moving on. Sometimes when I think of my family and best friends breathing the cool, clean air of Northern California, I am absolutely positive that my decision to leave is the right one. When I imagine the majesty of Marin’s headlands and the Golden Gate Bridge stretched across that grey-green water like a masterpiece watercolor painting, I know deep in my belly, that this is time to move on. But of course, there will always be a piece of Los Angeles, the City of Angels and all it represents, inside me where ever I go and to be sure, a piece of me will remain within these city streets, canyon hills, and the sparkling Mulholland cityscape.

lil' purple pixie

& You Tube presents

BUSHISM THEATER



with this in mind CLICK and hear a cool parody.

Arlington

Mateo was all about “sentience” and “magnanimity” the little purplepixie learned after her second and his third cup of coffee, sitting in the smoky diner they often frequented. The Brite Spot was a kind of a refuge for this particular nook of the busy Los Angeles maze. This warm summer evening, the fan in the kitchen was broken, so that the Brite Spot took on an ironically hazy atmosphere; light ran in opaque white streams through the double glass doors and the slits in the blinds above the maroon booths, and in solid stripes along the glossy formica tabletops. The distinct fragrance of bacon and cheap maple syrup lingered in the warm temperature, sweetening the air surrounding pixie and Mateo’s conversation. She batted her wysteria eyelids in confusion and genuine interest in his direction, a nervous habit that had become considerably worse since she began working at the diner in the presence of so many male-shaped angels and demons. Mateo continued to stare almost straight forward and would occasionally, but effectively, rotate his upper torso to look into pixie’s iris eyes if only momentarily for the gesture of a connection before his blue-gray shyness returned and caused him to look away. But his shyness may have been another cloak, pixie thought.

Mateo drank another sip of his coffee and flashed his mint-pool eyes, his cheeks dimpling as the corners of his mouth turned upward in an almost cherubic smile. “Satellite of Love” by Lou Reed came over the speakers in the exact right moment in Mateo’s soft-spoken monologue on the subject of love. Moments like that – synchronicity of music to thought – were due to serendipity at the least, either that or Basil Ono was on his way in his 1982 red Volkswagen Fox and had called out the muses as he drove west on Sunset Blvd.



Pixie was amazed at Mateo, who had only a week ago cut off his waist long dreads. She was amazed because she had never talked him before without Basil intervening and drawing her focus away from the barely audible tatted-up man. He had an exceptional oral vocabulary, wound words and images together in tapestries that always had the perfect beginnings and endings, with complicated tangents sewn within. He said that he preferred to not simply quote books, but to use his original thoughts instead. But they both realized that most of his perfect-paragraph-tapestries were buttressed by quotes from T.S. Elliot, Einstein, and Nietzche.

Besides embodying various hues of the violet spectrum, and being quite inquisitive, Pixie was a smarty, as far as sweet silly gals are concerned. Still, she didn’t know exactly what to make of Mateo, even in the calm of Basil’s temporary absence. She had read some basic nihilist thought, certainly knew, in some detail the contributions Einstein and T.S. Elliot had made to the intellectual world, and why someone concerned with the nature of “sentience” and “magnanimity” would have trouble paying verbal tribute to these geniuses. Although Pixie was not momentarily foggy on the exact definitions of these two paradigms, she attempted to follow the essence of what the now Dread-less Mateo spoke, figuring that open attitude was probably in part, magnanimous.



---NOT DONE...MUCH TO COME---

The little purplepixie realized much later, that in fact, sentience, by definition, was reactionary.






I pulled this from a catched entry from cyber-remains of the old FIREpit . . . a lovely poem . . . by a lovely daughter . . .

Title: one poem... Author: Courtney Date: Jun 6, 2004 6:28 pm
Not always fireworks



I counted the stars in your eyes tonight
Tiny pricks of dull white light
Flitting around in an ocean of coffee
Like flecks of cream too cold to marry
with all that hot liquid.


In a dizzy mess of syllables
You blinked away those stars
Conquering the demons of hope and possibility
(in favor of retracted tenderness)
You surely emit your propensity for distance.



In a tepid gesture of feigned connection
I stare at the small streaks of night crystallizing
On the plate glass window shield,
Brush back my hair and attempt to dodge the spikes
of your stone-cold apathy.



All I wanted was to swing
From your outstretched arms and regal neck
Like a child spider-monkey – without fear or silence
Flight from my firm belief in your stability.
And faith in my own constant ascent.



We held our breath and wished for fireworks
I squeezed and smoothed your hand
In bitter sweet anticipation
For that pop and burst of color
To ignite against the moon-bleached sky.
>


Listless, we walked all night
Chasing those invisible impossibilities
Ruminating in the awkward space of in betweens
A thousand purple maybes danced around our feet
And like grunions, silverly dived head first into the sand.



To our left was Mount Olympus
And at our backs the melt of tangerine volcano rivers.
The sky is a rouged mess of fog and ambient light
Framed with the black outlines of tangled trees
And unspoken disenchantment.


The fickle Gods laugh at our meager endeavor
To breathe in those perfect visions
(As if we could stop staring at our own empty hands
Long enough to taste some true appreciation)
So we cowardly cast our eyes downward, too ashamed to see.



You speak words to me like luke-warm water
Peeling away layers of passion, reveal some seed of discontent.
At the loss of words in one tall night
I bend myself inward and lament
Those evasive fireworks and perfect maybes left still silent.
06/06/04







The Age of 25 in 2006:

Never, not even once when I was a dreaming visionary soul of a child, did I imagine that I would be living in Los Angeles and working in front a computer at UCLA writing about Native American Performance and desperately attempting to FIND MYSELF while in the process of continuing my continuing education. NEVER! Are you happy(?), you ask. Yes, yes. I am happy. Are you fulfilled? Eh.... My happiness comes from my overall approach to life. There comes a point when one must be honest with oneself. Look oneself in the mirror and accept that person staring back with all her beauty and various limitations. Me? Well, I am a friend. A lover. A daughter. A sister. A granddaughter. What makes up my day is many thoughts about the world and people, more specifically: the state of education, the state of world peace, the feeling and notion and comfort of God(s) and awareness, the future of me, my loved ones, the MamaPlanetEarth, (wo)man(kind), music, theater, the arts, the lost primacy of print culture, the frightening and exhilerating promise of internet/computer/wireless/information/overcommunication culture, post-modernism in the home, workplace, schoolhouse and playyard, the promise of something always around the corner better and sweeter and more lovely than anything else I have experienced, and the JOY (there really is infinite JOY) that cultivating and nuturing relationships and love brings. (3/10/06)


Title: rite of the first born Author: Courtney Date: May 4, 2004 1:36 pm Hello all:

First off, I am obviously Daddy's favorite. Second of all, the Boz was my first home; I actually lived there - so I get claim over it. Third of all, this is pretty cool Dad-dee-oh!!! rite of the first born - Courtney 05/04/04 - 01:36 pm

bye bye LA



Good Bye New York City with her little sister graduated there's no pressing urgency to return . . . in the near future . . .

This is how strong love is . . . sometimes you don't know how fortunate you are until you have a glimpse of what it would be if it's all swept away . . . that's how strong love is . . .