Monday, April 15, 2013

The auto-bio entry #2

So, it's the 1980's, the setting is Venice, California.

Now what?

Oh, yeah, I tell you the shit I remember and try to spin it into some kind of pretty tapestry of words...

The very idea of this makes me itch to wax poetic about my high school years in the 90's...a friend of mine posted this thing on the increasingly frustrating facebook about the differences in yourself and how you react to the world in your early 20's versus your late 20's. For whatever reason I thought about high school, and how sweet and innocent it all was. Seemed. Seems now, in my far off memories of it. It was also a huge clusterfuck that I barely survived much like most of the rest of my life up to this point, but at least I was not completely aware of how much of a clusterfuck it was at the time...

Anyhow...let's see, some other fact's of life...I was home-schooled. Or, well, I was actually what some groups now call "unschooled" for the first 12 years of my life. I was taught whatever seemed like a good thing to teach that day. My mom did a good job of finding out about lots of books to teach from at the Venice Library. Back when it looked like this:


And was in the building on California and Electric Ave. that is now the Vera Davis McClendon Family Center.So many memories in this building...I went to so many events here, my sisters and I grew up in this library. 

Anyhow, I was taught to read, write, spell horribly, cook, sew, clean the windows, all from home! I also learned the basics of the combustible engine, how to change the wax ring in the bottom of the toilet, how to pick both a pad lock and door lock with a piece of music wire and the great importance of Jazz music on not only American history but on the family unit. This last was due to the fact that my father came from a deep network of Chicago Jazz musicians and was taught how to play drums by none other than Joe Morello while his father (my grandfather) had an after jam session conversation with Dave Brubeck in the living room.

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