So, it has been an odd year. A year sufficiently odd than I hesitate in contemplation of what to wish for. Wishes get twisted. So, here’s to the New Year, whatever it might come to be, and the opportunity to see it through.

Another possibility, I suppose, is that the people supporting Proposition 8 are just selfish.  They enjoy the benefits and responsibilities of a marriage and just don’t want to share the joy.  Well, that would be rather sad and despicable of them personally, but is certainly no reason to deprive other people of the joys, sorrows,and responsibilities of marriage.

Finally, I have heard that some people support Proposition 8 for religious reasons.  Well, it is perfectly acceptable to believe whatever you like religiously.  It is even encouraged.  However, one of the great things about this country is that just because you believe something to be true, you don’t then get to impose your beliefs on other people.  We all have the same rights and the rights are protected.  They include the freedom from having someone else’s religious beliefs imposed on us.  We, well, most of us, wouldn’t want it any other way.

So, let us all marry whomever we would choose and then let the divorce lawyers enjoy a windfall.

No on 8

I used to love this poem by Jenny Joseph.  It captured my rebellious side, captured my desire to be even odder than I truly am, then to flaunt that oddness in face of all those who worship fitting in.  Of which, as I live in Los Angeles, there are quite a few.  Alas, the Red Hat Lemmings (ladies) have ruined the poem for me.

 Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

by Jenny Joseph

I own a red hat.  I have owned it for far longer than the Red Hat Society has existed, but alas I have relegated it to the back of my closet.  If I wear my red hat I am asked “Are you one of them, those ladies with that poem.”  So, black hats with huge brims, white hats, bush hats, feathered hats are all worn with dash and aplomb, but the red hat carries too much baggage.  It no longer signals a certain verve, an intrepidly independent streak.  Instead red hats have degenerated to the status of a fashion cliché.  Red Hat Society teas, conventions, cruises, tours all filled with noxious ladies in red hats and purple dresses.  I cannot conceive of anything more antithetical to the sentiments expressed in Jenny Joseph’s “Warning” than to have it associated with a herd of women all doing the same thing, looking the same way.

I guess I am going to have to stick to wearing other hats, at least until all the Red Hat Lemmings have found their cliff.

Now, as I understand it, one of the fun things about picadillo is that no two people make it the same way.  There are regional variations based on the foods commonly available and well as personal and familial variations.  I suppose if you tried hard, you could conceivably make it wrong, but you would have to try very hard and it would only be an insensitive oaf who would bother to criticize.  Picadillo is a comfort food.  One of those foods your mother would make from your grandmother’s recipe.  Something heavenly that the house smelled of when you finally arrived home.

Now, as I said in the previous posting.  I am predominantly of some vaguely British ( English. Scottish, Irish, French Canadian) extraction and my culinary heritage tends toward rather bland meat and potatoes.  Well, we have all heard the jokes about British food.   The French part of the family might have contributed something of culinary interest, but it apparently was lost in the annals of history as apparently did my recipe for Picadillo.

I was initially introduced to Picadillo by a friend from Berkeley.  Thus this is yet another foray into the memory of my long lost youth, more specifically, the wild and wonderful college days at Berkeley.  However, as with many things from that time and earlier, somewhere along the way the details got lost and I was left with a vague idea of what went into the recipe: ground beef, a can of tomato sauce, a jar of green olives, a can of applesauce (one of the distinctive ingredients I was told), raisins (also distinctive), garlic, onions, vinegar.  I vaguely remember the “can of this and can of that” format that had made it reasonable easy for a college student to assemble, but no specifics.  I needed specifics!!  I need to get it right, to taste like Berkeley 1978.  Serious gastric memories were at stake.  Were there spices?  Was I leaving out some essential transformative ingredient?

So, I inquired of the source “Do you remember your Mom’s picadillo recipe from Berkeley?”  Alas, a dead end, nada, no interest.  So, as with most questions today, it was time to go surfing.  Typing picadillo into google yielded a host of responses the most interesting of which was a site called “cooks.com“.  A fabulous place, well worth exploring, which yielded several pages of picadillo recipes.  Well, none of them seemed to capture the memory quite perfectly.  However, there were enough of them that I could mix and match and patch together a recipe that more then adequately fed both my memories and my appetite with multiple opportunities for future experimentation.

So, here it is, Picadillo rediscovered and recorded for future use.

Picadillo

1 lb ground beef
1 large onion chopped
2-3 garlic cloves chopped
1 small can tomato sauce
1 6-0z can tomato paste
1 small jar Pimiento stuffed green olives
1/2 to 1 c Raisins
1 jar applesauce
1 tsp salt
2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp ground cumin
dash ground cloves
dash ground cinnamon
1-2 tsp vinegar

Brown the ground beef, onions and garlic together, pour off the excess fat.  Turn heat down to low.  Add the remainder of the ingredients and simmer until most of the liquid evaporates.  (or you give in to the heavenly smell and decide it is time to eat)

There are many, many variations.  You can use shredded beef, pork, chicken or beans instead of the ground beef.  You can leave out the applesauce, add green peppers, add nuts, change from green to black olives, change or leave out whatever spices you like.  Experiment.  Enjoy.

 My husband, when parked at a deli, is fond of inquiring of the compatriots then present “Who makes your favorite corned beef?”  Then, often before they have a chance to respond, he tells them “You favorite corned beef tastes like the stuff from the deli you went to when you were twelve.”  There is a truth in that, or a truth of sorts, believing as I do that truth is largely relative and maleable.

Perhaps much of who we are, of what feels right to us, is set by our experiences when we were young.  How much of our perception of well being as adults comes from how closely we can now approximate our youth?  No, not all of those insecurities and inadequacies that tormented ones childhood and teen years, but the good things.  The memories of food, security, health and youth. 

This all came to me, other than occasionally being queried about corned beef, when I noticed that I was no longer as limber as I had been, as I remembered being in that long past youth.  I had spent years in my youth during high school and college doing ballet and jazz dance.  Being limber, flexible and strong, was what feeling young meant to me.  Now, creeping past fifty, I was beginning to get stiff.  Oh, nothing major, I could still touch my toes, even in three inch heels, but clearly no longer the smooth ease of movement that characterized my decidedly un-wild youth.  Steps need to be taken.  The situation cried out for rectification. 

So, for the new year, Pilates is the answer.  Yoga would serve as well, but according to some Pilates is dance based, so the movements and language are more familiar.  However, the methodology is perhaps less important than the end result.  Means versus ends, ends versus means we shall see.  A different truth..  A question remains grammatically though as to what the verb would be, or perhaps it is the gerund.  My grammatical comprehension is failing also along with the vanishing flexilibity, but admittedly grammer was never a strong point.  I am Pilating, or am I Pilatesing.  I am confused, but that isn’t news either.

With regard to Corned Beef I am even more confused.  Corned Beef always came with cabbage in my family and was pretty much boiled to death.  Not much there that would explain my husband’s passion about it.  Although, admittedly, as with me his passion isn’t for Corned Beef, but rather for youth and that previously ingrained sense of well being.

So, yes, there are other Starbucks now.  They are spaced out along Ventura Boulevard at roughly half mile intervals, but I will miss this one.  It had a unique atmosphere, quirky enough to be interesting, a reasonably odd assemblage of patrons to make the people watching satisfying, yet nothing so outrageous as to feel unsafe.  Even the homeless guy who hung out in front trying to intimidate (he scowled, but then again why shouldn’t he) patrons into donating, seemed the right fit.  This Starbucks and I watched each other mature.  We saw each other through the rebuilding years after the earthquake and we watched each others families evolve.  My children into teenagers and then adults while I watched generations of baristas find their footing and move on to other careers, hopefully better or at least more interesting careers.

Yes, I hear you will be back in a couple of years when the building has been rebuilt into a modern commercial / retail / residential complex, the wave of the future.  The corporate Starbucks will return, this time in the preferred corner location, but the unique blend of character that emerged here will have dissipated, changed, moved on.  Everything changes, and I will miss you. 

Basic language is easily enough acquired, though that may not be sufficient for ones creative purposes, but what about creative disciplines that require other sources?  What is the equivalent in what ever creative paradigm one might engage in that letters and words are to language and writing?  I spent some time as an architect and after I had graduated with a degree in architecture, it seemed to me that my design teachers had left out an essential element, the acquisition of a visual vocabulary.  How could I play with ideas when my exposure to the visual environment was primarily tract houses and suburbs?  If it was not visually a wasteland, then it was certainly visually impoverished if only by its lack of variety.  It became apparent to me that the first thing someone should have relayed was that I needed to look at things, to study the visual world, to create a three dimensional vocabulary, a built vocabulary.  For architecture it was a blend of visual, seeing different possibilities and then technical mastery, what works and what doesn’t, gravity and structure, equating to grammar perhaps.  Until the whole thing comes together and builds and matures you don’t really begin to think creatively.  So, I have spent the years since then doing that, reading magazines, looking at the built world and observing critically.  Critical observation is crucial, but I don’t mean that in the sense that most art, theater or dining critics would.  I am not looking for any one thing to be better than another, but rather at how it comes together. How it fits or conversely contrasts with its context.  What were the design constraints and how were they resolved.  Eventually you start to develop a feel for the thing, for all the myriad details and changes in scale and how they all come together,  for the possibilities to be explored in the shaping of space while not losing track of the texture of the details. 

 So, in how many fields, or how diversely can one successfully be creative.  Even if success is measured only as the ability to sufficiently entertain oneself, which, clearly is mainly what I do.  The interesting thing is that I believe the same process holds true regardless of the particular area of endeavor.  In which case a question would be, how transferable is any of it?  Does having developed an expertise in one particular area mean one can shorten the process in another field, or must the field be somehow related.  Clearly some art related areas cross over well, but would an expertise in art enable one to learn to compose?  Possibly not, but it might depend on the acquisition of a basic vocabulary, or it may be, as with speech, that ones develops a vocabulary in the areas of ones interests naturally.  Thus you may have been acquiring a musical vocabulary over many years and then one day finally have the time to put it to use and discover that it is there waiting for you. 

It is the same process regardless of the discipline:  music, painting, fashion, jewelry, and the same issues of building a vocabulary, then learning to manipulate it pertains to them all.  Learn the vocabulary, learn the technique, and study the history and then …..Well, then we get to the next aspect of the problem, the process of creation.  How do you put yourself into a workable creative paradigm?  ED3 for those who might have been there. (Trusting a somewhat failing memory)  An interesting question as it was thirty years ago.  One of the answers, despite Nike co-opting the phrase, is to “just do it”, but that is a different discussion. 

Ah well, perambulating to no good purpose I suppose.

An ever popular sentiment, courtesy of “The Guess Who”

Nothing in particular against the Guess Who and their classic, but don’t you just love being stereotyped, being reduced to a caricature of yourself?  Race, religion, and politics what is going on when someone chooses to refer to you as a class rather than speaking directly to you, responding to you as the unique individual that you are.  It is a power play then, a way to trivialize what you are trying to say.  After all, if you can be reduced to a stereotype, then clearly you have nothing new to contribute, nothing to say that might require a thoughtful response.  The same old knee-jerk reaction will suffice.  Out of anger or fear, it is an easy response, but it doesn’t serve particularly well as a means of communication.

The Mistress had decided to expand the Sisterhood, Sisters of the Forsaken, across the many differing realms of this world and to that end had a foothold on disparate and varied realms, but had focused primarily on the Horde faction, being somewhat naturally inclined that direction. Now, the Mistress is very good at acquiring funds and in short order usually amasses a considerable amount despite being new to a realm. In considering the future of this sisterhood, she determined that the alliance was underrepresented. As there are only a limited number of RPPVP realms available, she was faced with the need to abandon a Horde presence in one realm in order to better balance the Sisterhood’s representation across these worlds. Faced with this possibility, it did not seem appropriate to just abandon her stash of cash and highly valued blue items, to leave them to be reabsorbed into Blizzard’s rapacious gullet. No, some other method was necessary. So, the Priestess Azzara relayed her experience with charity, when as a novice the gentle Knight Chaembal, had taken pity on her insignificance and had gifted her with green items and gold, enabling her to venture forth and explore with more joy. Ever after Priestess Azzara has indulged herself with acts of unexpected charity. The moral of this tale resonated with the Mistress Tzu and she set out to rid herself of her monetary burden so that she could start anew as an Alliance Tzu. The Mistress waited patiently in the throne room of the Undercity, awaiting someone who would further her goals in the game, someone upon whom she could sow her gifts and see them well used. So, she waited there seeking an individual who would address her in the language of the realm. When he came at last and offered her assistance, she blessed him with financial reward beyond his imagining and left the realm to start again as his opponent in ethical combat.So, what lesson lies here?

Be kind, offer assistance and you will always be blessed in return.

As it turns out, the pictures from my recent trip to Europe were on my camera.  Through the tumult of returning and getting through the next few months, I had put off, delayed, not bothered with the process of downloading them to my computer.  Now they were lost, with the camera.  Something irreplaceable, through my distraction and inattention was, potentially, gone forever.  In that moment, I knew that I valued them, that record of my life, of time with my daughter.  Gone.

 So, I started thinking about other things that get lost along the way.  Things that we value that through inattention, distraction, wanton destruction, get lost as we live.  When you see a “Lost Dog” sign posted somewhere, don’t you wonder “How did that happen?”  You know those people loved their dog.  How did it happen?  A moment’s distraction, a gate left unlocked, being torn between two obligations.  All it takes sometimes is an instant and objects, moments, people are lost.  Sometimes it takes longer. 

Sometimes it takes a concerted effort to achieve alienation and neglect, but eventually things are lost, people are lost, connections are lost and then we discover their true value.  The tragedy is that often in our haste and distraction we lose sight of the value of keepsakes, notions, emotions, memories, friends and family until they are gone, missing, lost.

I found the camera, eventually. 

In any event, the article prompted me to ponder why it is that people voted Republican in the first place. In so far that is that one votes for a party rather then a person, because clearly if one were voting for a person, Bush would have been far less likely to be elected. Then given that one is voting for a party, which particular myth, as there are many, of a party are you voting for. What would prompt any right-thinking person, or fantasy-enveloped person as may be more accurate to vote Republican as clearly about half the country did, approximately, more or less, depending on the day, the state, the person counting and the hang of the chad.

It sprang to mind, and I rather like these thoughts that spring to mind. I tend to think that they are inspired while others of my acquaintance see them as misbegotten and ill considered, but there you have it. It sprang to mind that the reason people who vote Republican do so is because they are dreamers. Democrats are pragmatists, but Republicans are dreamers, they believe. Republicans believe in the American Dream, or perhaps the American Myth. They believe that with a little skill, luck and possibly some hard work, they to can be the next Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs. They believe in the stories promulgated by Horatio Alger, who, as it turns out, according to Wikipedia, was most likely a pedophile, but maybe that is an interesting parallel in its own right with the Republican Party of today, although slightly off topic. However, the Horatio Alger stories, commonly held to be the genesis of the rags to riches notion of the American Dream are, in fact, usually misrepresented. In his stores, or so Wikipedia indicates, the best most characters attain is not great wealth, but rather through courage, character and the assistance of a wealthy elder gentleman, they are rewarded with a stable middle class existence. Interestingly, they do represent the factual reality of most people’s interaction with American society, the evolution of a middle class. Well, and the odd pedophilia thing. How does that fit in?

People who vote Republican believe that they to can become a success here in the USA and that further, if by some wild, weird twist of fate they are successful, then that success will be theirs. No one, governmental or private, will have the right to take their money or their ideas, or tell them what to do, or how to live. It is one of the purest motivations for immigrating here. I can go to the US. I can become a success and no one can take it away from me. It isn’t entirely true. It is, in large part a fantasy, a myth, but nonetheless it is what Republicans are voting for.

Does it sound like there is a quasi religious element to this? Yes, I think that there is, however, it isn’t organized religion in the sense that we typically perceive it when we think of conservation Republican politics. It is the politics of belief, the power of fantasy.

Democrats, on the other hand, are pragmatists. It is a necessary point of view, but a lot less colorful and thus much harder to seduce people into voting with you. Democrats recognize that most of us, maybe 99.9% of us are not going to be the next Bill Gates. The true percentage is probably even worse, but I am only guessing. Given that nearly all of us are going to spend our lives barely getting by, the Democrats figure it would be a good thing to have small things to assist in basic survival. Things like universal health care and enough money to nominally retire. Democrats care about the necessities of life although they are far less glamorous. People vote Democratic when they have given up, when they are worn down and frightened, but people who vote Republican, when they have nothing and have little prospect of ever having anything. These are the people voting on faith, voting for a possibility, for a fantasy.

I admit it, what some of you have always suspected and derided. From time to time I have voted Republican, to the consternation, dismay and contempt of those who think I should know better.

Yes, I am about to comment on myself. When I wrote the previous, the individual who had forwarded the Dowd article to me got irate. He had several issues, which I will try to state acurately in the follow on posting, but as I no longer have access to the discussion, I may, at best, only approximate them and even so cannot really claim to have ever understood what anyone was “really” thinking.

So, not wanting to leave those concerns unaddressed, the follow on posting is “The Politics of Compassion”

During the main part of the tourist season 50% of the water is diverted. At night and during the off season about 75% is diverted. The reasons for doing so are multiple; however, it appears to be an extraordinary waste to let all of that potential energy escape. Instead, they reroute it through the hydroelectric plants on both the Canadian and U.S. sides whose power is then shared, by virtue of international accord, between the interested parties, the US and Canada.

However, power isn’t the only reason for diverting the flow of water. Another major consideration is erosion. The falls are receding toward Lake Erie at a rate of about a couple of inches a year. The rate used to be a foot or so, but the diversion has slowed it down, along with some fix it work on the American Falls by the Army Corp of Engineers, yes, those of Katrina fame.

What is the problem here? Why not just let the falls erode, let nature do its thing? Several reasons, the tourism, shipping and hydroelectric industries all require that the location of the falls be somewhat stabile. Shifting the tourist hotels might be fairly easy, but re-cutting the Welland Ship Canal would be a problem. Another issue is that the bottom of Lake Erie is higher than the bottom of the falls. So, eventually, as the falls recede at whatever rate, the lake will drain.

So, why write this? Who really cares? I like the ironic juxtaposition that environmentalists have concerned themselves with restraining industry and development in the area, when to my way of thinking, they should be concerned with letting the falls return to their natural state. Let them erode. Free the Falls. I want to see the evolution, the change.

Nonetheless, even in their diminished capacity, it is an awesome sight.

PS: For serious fun, try the jet boat trip up the Niagara Gorge.

Now lobster should not, cannot be gobbled down one handedly, distractedly while nattering away on a cell phone. Lobster is to be savored, eaten slowly, bite by bite, to lovingly dip each morsel in drawn butter and then slowly savor its delicate taste and texture. Delighting in its sweetness and licking ones lips. Hmm…. maybe licking someone else’s lips, but I digress. Here before me is my unsolicited dining companion, the result of an unhappy conjunction of circumstance.  He is trying ineffectually to detach the tail meat, which he cannot do without a knife and fork, two hands and a chunk of focus. The best he can do is to roll the tail meat as if it were spaghetti into a huge ball on his fork, then he holds down the shell with the elbow of the cell phone hand and jerks the mass of tail meat away from the shell.

Okay, dip and nibble I think, that could work, but I have forgotten who I am dealing with here and I watch shocked as he shoves he whole ball of tail into his mouth. He is perplexed, what to do? Too much to chew, can’t swallow, worse, can’t talk! Alas, he is forced to hang up the cell phone and attempt to sort the situation out.

Consummate foolishness and a sad waste of a lovely lobster.

It turns out that recent polls indicate that most Americans are of the God-fearing type and if not God-fearing then at least God-conversant. Apparently the exact blend of percentages, which God, worshiped in what particular way, by how many, varies across the country, but it remains clear that upwards of seventy-five percent of us like to hear about God from our politicians. We like to hear that they look to a higher source for their inspiration and motivation. This appears to be true everywhere, but California, where the Godless heathens live. Who would have thought? Apparently Bush is on the right track, letting himself be guided by God. There are even those who feel that Bush doesn’t refer to God enough, that he should do it more often.

By this point I was pretty nauseated. I had always thought that my relationship to a God, assuming I could figure out which and why in the first place, was sort of a personal thing. I thought it a private matter between myself and whatever, whomever, but the best is yet to come. The parting segment is a short video of Hillary Clinton quoting the bible at a campaign speech. I had to turn the segment off before they could run it again. It was bad enough that I had to think that she had sacrificed the last shreds of her integrity to do this, to please the handlers and consultants who told her that this was what America wants in a president, but further, she doesn’t do it well. It comes across as an act and a bad one at that. And I had such high hopes for the woman.

Who knows, maybe it plays well outside of the land of the heathens.

William Gibson hypothecates that when you fly, your soul, not traveling as fast, trails behind you lost somewhere in the ether, struggling to catch up.

ash is falling
a silent rain
smothering reign
choking rain

ash to the horizon
ashes of was
ashes of is
ashes of might be

a legacy of mutual immolation
a joint conflagration
a foregone conclusion

ice burns as surely

waiting in ash
for a phoenix to rise

it calls to us,
beckons alluringly,
sooths the soul
the sound of water
the scent of rain
aridness constrained
water in a dry land

castle on a hill
bastion opposing heat and sun
the edge of civilization
triumph in time, over time
pools, fountains,
senses willingly beguiled
paradise
water in a dry land

so you have been
water in a dry land

Some lives intersect along whole surfaces. They blend together in seamless arcs and pleasing forms. Point and counterpoint in rhythm with each other, not conjoined, but blended, symmetry, a balance achieved, comfort.

Some lives merge together, run hand in hand with each other. They merge and enhance becoming larger entities, edifices, cathedrals one might say. A merging together of lives to create something understandable, coherent, perceptible, a unity, a shaped space.

But our lives, the complex geometries of ourselves intersect irascibly, conjunctive points in an imperceptible structure whose purpose, meaning or ultimate form surpasses our cognition. Occasions of connection that lead not rhythmically onward nor to some larger purpose. Occasions which neither preclude nor predestinate some future connection.

I dreamt I dwelt in hallowed halls, ivy covered halls, dreams of greenness, of decay. Think you green is life and spring and rebirth. No, it feeds; it feeds on us, our constructs and fabrications. Green is the predator and we its prey.

Each year, in spring, I stripped it from the walls. Patiently, carefully detaching the delicate tendrils, the creepers, that had wound themselves into the walls, insinuated themselves into the mortar rendering what had bound the brick into structure, instead into crumbling ruin. I started gently, as if extricating my hand from that of a child or lover and ended by madly hacking at the trunk. Seeking to sever the main vine and end it all, abruptly, completely.

Each spring I free the house by tearing away the green. Red brick emerges, rich and earthy. The windows come alive with life and light, the eyes into a soul. But summer passes and fall comes, inexorably the ivy returns, the fine tendrils grow back, seeking, prying, invading. The light goes out, the life dies and dark within dark, the windows reflect only the emptiness inside.

Creeping in she spotted Leonard at the kitchen table. He sat there; browsing through the pile of sailing books, and petting cruise to Baja as if it were a large cat. In fact, cruise to Baja was purring quite contentedly. Soon he would be foolishly talking about buying a boat. They couldn’t afford that and anyway, she was working now. The other dreams were arrayed around the room in varying degrees of somnolence. They lay strewn across the piles of dream paraphernalia, the old electric guitar, the cameras, the books, and pile upon pile of junk.

Quiet though she had been, eventually the dreams notice her and came boiling and hissing to swirl around her, with the older ones content to snarl nastily from their perches. She was slowly suffocating in Leonard’s dream. “Get rid of them”, she yelled. “When are you going to face reality and get rid of them?” Jenny cried as she slammed the door on her way out.

Hours later, Jenny came back to the apartment and found piled on the stoop, blocking the door, the piles of junk from inside. The dreams perched in various places, some snarling, some howling, and some crying softly. Reaching for the door, Jenny saw the note resting in front of the electric guitar. “You were right Jenny. I’ve gone to look for a job”. Jenny smiled softly for a moment until distracted by the wild laughter of rock star who sat happily ensconced on her bulging suitcase.

Smelling of autumn and spring time she breathed, “Come, waltz with me”, luring me into her world of mystery and delight.   She shed dreams, like a tree shedding leaves.  The older ones lay scattered around her, dry and brittle with the musty scent of disuse while the new clung, fresh and pliant, scented with possibility.

I watched as she spun slowly, her long skirts sweeping the dreams as they drifted around her.  Trailing her finger down my forearm, disturbing the fine hairs there, “Come” she sighed.  Dreams, fears, memories glinted in her eyes, but I watched as she slipped into the mist alone.

Tridib Banerjee, a Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at USC complained that the building is hard to see, there is no space around it for people to congregate or contemplate it fully. “With the Pompidou, (in Paris) there is a plaza in front of it, a site for assembly.” Apparently Banerjee has forgotten some of the lessons of sixties modernism. The grand plazas, both designed and legislated into being around many commercial and public buildings, often end up as dehumanizing windblown wastelands. Instead of connecting buildings to the fabric of a city, they intentionally set them apart, elevating and dissociating the edifices that they protect from the encroachment of the older, more humanely textured city. Banerjee seems not to appreciate that architecture can be enjoyed from a variety of equally valid perspectives. Yes, it can be gazed at from afar like some remote untouchable jewel, but perhaps it is a more interesting experience if your perspective is closer. If you can look up from beneath it, touch it, feel the change in texture and see the subtle play of light across a surface. You can find the dirt in the crevices and see the patina as it ages. Medieval cathedrals were built with the city up against them, rising out of the rubble of humanity. They were intertwined with their cities and the elevating aspect of experiencing them derived from using them. In this perspective, architecture has always been an early form of interactive art. The art object never stands alone. It requires a participant to give it life. It is a different kind of experience, equally interesting and not a matter of judging better or worse.

Banerjee also commented that “It is a public building. It should contribute to civic pride and public life. It should create a sense of public space.” Aside from the issue that “civic pride” and “public space” have no commonly accepted definition, he also has lost track of the client. It is not a public building. It was built for the Los Angeles Symphony via a massive private fund raising effort that took over a decade. The city of Los Angeles disassociated itself from the effort almost entirely. The city was certainly not the client and it is the client that gets to set the parameters of the problem.

Lastly, the urban planners complain that the building turns its back on the pedestrian life on the street. You have to wonder what city they are living in as it certainly is not Los Angeles. There is no pedestrian life on the streets of Los Angeles. A lot of planners wish it were there, but they can’t quite figure out a way to legislate it into being now that they have decided that street life might be important.

The client issue also arises with respect to the acoustics of Disney Hall. “The hall is built to amplify. It will be suitable only for orchestral and other acoustic music.” Well, you can’t be everything to everybody and this is particularly true for music where the shape of the building has a profound impact on the sound. Like it or not, when you and your friends donate hundreds of millions of dollars to build a structure, you get to decide what kind of music you want to hear. I would assume that you also get lifetime seats, but maybe not. If you want a venue for experimental music you need to go find your own sponsor.

My favorite critiques, particularly with regard to their absurdity, concerned Gehry’s excess of creativity. More specifically, these critiques demonstrate an increasingly common unwillingness to think independently. Far too many people, politicians and educators in particular, seem not to know what they like until they have taken a poll. Li Wen, a faculty member at the USC architectural school commented “A difficult model for young students, for it tempts them to think that anything goes.” Forgive me, I must have misunderstood, when is it better to think that anything goes than in your youth? Youth is always tempted and unrestrained, only through experience can you know what works and what does not. Who better to dream wild dreams than our youth. It is sublimely ridiculous to say that we should not stretch creatively. Surely Li Wen’s obligation to his students is not to deter creative thinking, but to teach students what to do with a wildly creative idea when they get one, and interesting ideas are surely rare enough. Wen needs to help students find a technique for managing creativity so that it is not lost, to find a methodology for shaping ideas.

Finally we have Robert Ringstrom’s comment, “I am not comfortable with such personal self-expression”. Good God, then what on earth are you doing living in the United States. This reaction is actually foolishness on my part as the dichotomy between freedom and conformity is a well established part of American culture. Perhaps it has to do with our relative adolescence as a country, but that would mean that there is some hope of achieving a more mature approach, which I find unlikely. We have more freedom than anywhere else in the world, but we overlay the exercise of that freedom with a host of puritanical constraints. “Self expression” is evil, dangerous, and frowned upon. Creativity must be limited and constrained, corseted. It must be doled out by a pre-approved cultural authority.

Ultimately the most interesting critique of Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall comes down to this dichotomy between freedom and conformity. We love the building because it is unique, challenging and sensual, but ultimately it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t further the popular urban agenda. You are challenged to decide whether or not to think and feel on your own, without the aid of a guide, or to surrender yet again to some sanitized version of what space, architecture, urbanism and life are supposed to be.