Sim Carter: Past Tense Imperfect

Judging by the short bleached blonde hair, the Mexican peasant blouse I'm wearing (I'm the one in the middle)and the lovely couch my parents and I are sitting on, I'm going to say 1974. I recognize the hair cut from a picture of me in Vegas on my 21st birthday and I turned 21 in 1974. Which makes my mum, the babe on the left 49! She was pretty, wasn't she? My dad was 10 years older. When they met, she was 20 and he was 30, and everyone warned her to stay away from him. But he was quite the catch - he had that whole dashing, debonnaire British officer and a gentleman thing going for him. Add in that he spoke French, Italian, Spanish and Arabic fluently and she didn't stand a chance!

I went to see my mum today. It's been awhile. There was no one in the lobby so I signed in and went down the hallway scanning the doors for her name. Lots of elderly and infirm folks wandering the hallways in wheelchairs and walkers. Plenty of nurses in their greens carrying clipboards and pushing carts filled with meds. But no mum. She wasn't in her room, just a silver-framed picture of my dad and another one of my mother and me with Russell when he was a baby indicated the room belonged to her. I wandered down the hall and found a nurse. "I think she's with her son walking around" she told me. No she wasn't. I'd seen my brother's name signed out on the visitor log over an hour ago. I found her in the family room. A few round tables on rollers crowded with liters of coke and the lunches that family members visiting their loved ones, almost always women—mothers, grandmothers, rarely men— brought in. My mother was sitting apart from them all, a...

1) So how come they ’ re not on the postcard? Most of us picture palm trees when we think of L.A., but the coral tree, not the palm, is the official tree of our city. Sometimes called Tiger Claws, the coral trees found along the median strip of San Vicente Blvd in Brentwood, that stretch of the boulevard from 26th Street to Brigham Avenue where once a rail track ran, and now everyone on the Westside runs, are actually designated cultural historical monuments.  The Coral Tree is the official tree of Los Angeles There  ought to be a plaque              2) Hot Dog! We baseball fans love our Dodger dogs as much as we love the boys in blue. More hot dogs are eaten at Chavez Ravine – over 2 million a baseball year—than in any other major league ballpark in the country! 3) How much by the glass? We take for granted that when we go to the Getty, we ’ re going to get one of those great L.A. city views. What ’ s unexpected is what w...

My interview with Jane Wells, the broadcast journalist who covers business news at MSNBC came out in the April issue of 805Living. For those of you unfamiliar with the magazine, it was just nominated for a Maggy for best overall design which is pretty nifty to say the least. It's published in Westlake Village, California for the communities of the Conejo Valley and surrounding areas. Basically, we cover from Calabasas to Camarillo... with an emphasis on Agoura, Oak Park, Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks, and Newbury Park. It's mostly a lifestyle magazine, highlighting great places to shop, eat, and go to plus we also highlight notable and interesting people who live in the area. Hopefully I'll be able to link to it or post it here in the future. In the meantime you have to pick it up in the Conejo.

I was a copywriter at Max Factor for about five years back in the eighties. I came up with shade names, wrote package copy and created names for products too. Here, a piece inspired by that work. Maybe you’ve never heard of me but I’m the one you listen to in your heart of hearts. I’m the one who tells you how to be. I’m the cosmetic copy writer. Maybe I named your lipstick or told you exactly how to apply your blush. Maybe it was a little thing like putting on your mascara. Now you remember. “For big, fat lashes that last and last. Smudgeproof. Smearproof. Even kissproof.” Yes! That was me. I’m the one you run to when your mirror makes you moan. It’s me you turn to when Johnny Angel picks Carol Ann -- not you -- to take to the Senior Prom. Let’s face it. Without me you’re nothing. No one will ever love you. You’ll never have a boyfriend. You’re ugly. A pale, pimply, lipless, lashless, small-eyed, big-nosed, mousy-haired gnome. You are the walrus! Koo koo kachoo. I’m the cosmetic copy ...

It must be Spring. The leaves that fell from the tree last fall and landed on the patio have been rained on and rerained on so many times they’ve formed a rich carpet of mulch on the cement that only a shovel will be able to remove. The umbrella that was hanging from the front hall chair has been put away deep in the closet and the empty planter swinging from the shepherd’s hook just beyond our front door is crying out for color. A pair of ducks from the pond across the street, a dazzling green headed male and his mousy brown spouse, have taken up residence on the lawn across from our townhouse. The hills are still so green here in the Conejo that if you squint and block out the freeway exit signs you can almost trick yourself into believing you’re in Ireland on holiday. And at the end of the month, the kids at least, will be on spring break. Maybe the luck of the Irish has rubbed off on you and you’re off to some exotic locale - far enough away to escape your day to day world as well ...

Enough about my stories. I'm sick of my writing. What I'm not sick of is the writing of Khaled Hosseini. I am only 1/4th of the way into The Kite Runner, an exquisite book by Hosseini that is part fiction and part anthropology lesson. Set in Afghanistan, a country whose name formerly conjured up not much more than a rocky barren landscape with sheeted blurs for people -- those people,now one sees, are very much like you and me. From their blue jeans to their weakness of character. Hosseini has painted his country with a rich mixture of colors and textures, hate and love, pity and shame. I was shocked to find it such a beautiful and moving book! If you haven't read it take the word of the NY Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Isabel Allende and more and get thee to a bookstore or a library or Amazon.com quick. I can hardly wait to finish blogging so I can crawl into my bed and read right now. To learn more about Khaled Hosseini check out his website at http://www.khaledhoss...