Mavericks

I have always admired people who are willing to be different, who defy "authority" and the standards of living we are expected to live by. At the same time, I am a person who likes order, who is sometimes shocked or thrown off by behavior I am not ready for. I grew up in a Los Angeles neighborhood that had a wild diversity of people in it, and many of my early memories are of those people, of course.

My Father was a mechanic and had a garage very close to where we lived. Often he brought customers home for dinner because they would be around until he got them on the road later that night. One of my favorites was a singular gentlemen who was a good story teller, who sold fruits and vegetables off a small truck like vehicle, and who was the first gypsy kind of person I was to meet. He entertained us as we ate, with anecdotes and yarns, and I can well remember my Father's responses.

Years later when my parents were making their way through middle age crisis and beyond they became very active in the Latter Day Saint Church (Mormons). Thus they were moving into a kind of closed society, one very different than the one we grew up in. Like a lot of LDS people they became interested in genealogy and thus made a kind pilgrimage to New Orleans to look at the city/county records there to see what the Roberts background was. Well, it didn't take long to find that at the Great Grandfather level (I think that was it) they found the word "mulatto" loud and clear. A firewall, they turned away. But for my siblings and myself we have become even more interested, and one of my sisters pursues the record to this day.

Shadow Walk

Shadows are so much more active at times; this evening, twilight, the wind was blowing, the light active and dark coming on fast. It felt like the thing to do, walk until I reached the oil wells, or just before, and as I did the untrimmed bushes took on a life or their own. I found myself nearly accosted by their imagery, at times it seemed as if they were speaking to me, telling me a story about myself that I didn't want to hear, one that I thought I'd forgotten.

Venice along the boardwalk, walking East and West and then South, it is like a labyrinth. I kept going, tired after a long day of work, but willing to experience what I hadn't done in a long time. Darkness was very close now and it was as if I could hear the immortal words of Sachel Paige saying "don't look back, something may be following you." As I got close to the wells I turned North on Pacific, a favorite bar was only blocks away. A Hindu mantra helped me along...

It felt comfortable to go through the door, even though there was too much noise, and the juke box was a little high in volume, there was one bar stool empty about a third of the way back.

The main attraction of this place for me was a combination of the long aquarium behind the bar, and the owner's custom fed juke box (Billie Holiday, Bix Beiderbeck, Thelonius Monk, etc.). And that evening there wasn't soul in there I knew, that was good at the moment.

"Bar bourbon and beer back?" Yes, that will do. I miss the place now, it is long gone, doesn't exist in another form, as far as I know. Memories of Venice has been stoked recently by a video made about the Venice poets and art world of the fifties. Highly recommended:

"Swinging in the Shadows" - "Venice West and the LA Scene" with an excellent sound track. www.beaters.org

Names

In Patti Smith's book about her and Robert Mapplethorpe ("Just Kids") I found an important comment about names, something to the affect that "Robert was not a Bob" ... but evidently people wanted him to accept the nickname (?). Early on I had a version of this with my Grandfather Roberts (who was never Grandpa, incidentally). His name was Alexander, not Al or Alex. To his close friends he was A.J., otherwise it was Mr. Roberts or Alexander. (His sons seemed to be comfortable with the usual monikers, shortened versions of their given names: Norm, Dick and Joe, no problem, guess).

Several years ago my sisters contested the nickname given my Mother in her youth because she was named for her Great Grandmother, Julia, and thus it was felt that she might be better called "Frankie." Well, it turns out she didn't like the name, went along with it for years, and toward the end of her life Julia was returned to her as her name. I'm sure that you could think of many examples of this type of naming yourself, and hopefully you might find some examples of people who have taken their real names back.

And there are people I've know in the last few years who have decided that their given names (perhaps their nicknames as well) were not suitable for them and have renamed themselves, even going to court to do that legally. I was chosen by a man who worked for me as a witness in such a case and it was intriguing to see this through with him.

Names are extremely important, and yet they are thrown around as it they are not. Very often monikers fit and are comfortable, no problem ... often they are questionable, border on the diminutive or cute; at worst are in the neighborhood of Oscar Wilde's statement (was it him?) "Familiarity breeds contempt." I remember when I was small people trying on the "Donnie" name with me. Never worked, I remember looking at them as if to wonder what their problem was.