When I Lived on Cheremoya Avenue

My Los Angeles anniversary is approaching, and every year I write a story to honor my journey. April 26th marks my ninth year in America.

When I lived on Cheremoya Avenue my desk faced North. 

I had found it on the street a few days after I had moved into my apartment. It was made out of light-colored plywood; it was small, chipped, and missing a few pieces. It had likely been the desk of a teenager and I was 29 years old, but I needed one; I didn’t have much money, and I couldn’t resist the street appeal only a few feet from my doorstep.

I wrote my novel on that desk; I wrote some of my most important emails, and also my earliest blogs. 

My bedroom, when I lived on Cheremoya Avenue, was cozy but beautiful. I had bought the bed frame and the mattress from the previous tenant, Jennifer, and the tall, dark brown bookcase I had found right next to the plywood desk. I shared the apartment with Cynthia and with her cat, Spirit. I don’t have photographs of Cheremoya Avenue, so I am trying to remember the details at the best of my abilities. 

I love details. 

My bedsheets were purple, and so was the fuzzy blanket — 100% acrylic and yet luxurious at the touch. I had bought it at Ross not long after I had moved in. I used to shop at Ross a lot, when I lived on Cheremoya Avenue.

In that room, I read my first Joan Didion book, Blue Nights. Her writing influenced my style more than any other — I learned how to write in English, reading Joan Didion. I remember crying a lot in that room, but I also remember feeling hopeful like I had never felt before, excited like I had never felt before, and scared like I had never been before. I would often pull the thick, blue curtains so that the neighbors couldn’t see inside; my room was situated at the back of the building, on the ground floor, and it faced the narrow backyard where tenants gathered at the end of the day, when the evenings were warm. 

A stream of small white lights hung by the trees and created the perfect atmosphere for drinks and long talks. But I never participated. I stayed inside, until the night drugs put me to sleep. It was a difficult time in my life; I blacked out in that room, I hid in the closet when I was hallucinating on too much cocaine, and I bottomed out. But I also got sober there, relapsed, and stayed sober. 

It was there that I wrote the review of Old Ideas, Leonard Cohen’s album from 2012. 

I wasn’t being paid for it. I had tried to sell the piece to the several Italian magazines I was in contact with, but nobody was interested. So I wrote it for my little blog and sent it to Robert Kory, Leonard’s manager. (I don’t remember how and where I had found his email address). 

I thought about Leonard because Ben woke me up with Chelsea Hotel a few mornings ago. 

 

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
You were talking so brave and so sweet…

As I nursed Catherine, my mind began to wander, until it landed on Cheremoya Avenue, during the time that preceded meeting Leonard in New York. I wrote extensively about the encounter, and about how it changed my life. But I never wrote about what came before, and right after.

I have often been ashamed of my naiveté and perseverance in those years; I felt foolish for believing that my dreams could come true. But today I look at that time with admiration and pride, with tenderness, and with gratitude. I am the American dream. 

At the end of December of 2011, when the first track of the album was released, I had sent Robert my little review of Old Ideas, and Robert had emailed back inviting me to New York for the album premiere.

“Leonard doesn’t give interviews other than for a few major outlets,”

he had said,

“but I’ll make sure you can spend some time with him.”

When I returned to Los Angeles, and to my job as a sale assistant in a clothing store in Hollywood, I was emotionally hungover.

Had that really happened?

It was almost my birthday, and the day after I returned from New York, Leonard’s daughter, Lorca, came into the store to buy clothes for her daughter. I was rarely in charge of the kids section, but that day I was behind the counter surrounded by onesies and t-shirts to fold. 

I told Lorca the story of meeting her father, and I went home a little happier than before.

The rest is history.

I think that when we get the chance to look back and reconstruct our story, we get to see the journey laid out almost as if on a map. When I don’t obsess over the destination, I can see how far I have come, how much I have achieved, rather than how much farther I have to go. Do you ever feel this way?

“It took Leonard 13 years to write Hallelujah, Alice” Robert would say to me every time that I complained nobody wanted to publish my novel, or every time that I complained for yet another re-writing I had to do. After I had met Leonard, in fact, Robert had become my manager, too.

I was impatient and I wanted the reward. I wanted the immediate result, the glory. I wanted to show all those I had left in Italy and all those I had met in Los Angeles that I was special.

When I lived on Cheremoya Avenue I wrote blogs on WonderlandMag, my first attempt at blogging. I never gave up. I contacted big starts as if I were a Pulitzer Price winning journalist, and I managed to meet and talk to some of the most brilliant artists. I was bold, brave, with nothing to lose. 

Oh, how much I loved Cheremoya Avenue, the small kitchen with pink tiles and the pots hanging above the stove, the leather couch and the two desks that faced the courtyard; Cynthia is a writer, too, and she periodically re-arranged our living room. I loved that about her; she has always been an example of independence, humility, and hard work. I don’t think I have ever told her that.

I didn’t have many friends when I lived on Cheremoya Avenue; it was still early in my American life, and I was very confused as to how Los Angeles worked. But Cynthia helped me get a job, get back on my feet, drove me to Target or to get groceries when — for some reason — I didn’t feel like driving my big Camaro to the store. I was afraid of parking it, and I was afraid of the street of Los Angeles. She showed me the way. We had our arguments, we were different, but I have been lucky to have her by my side in those years. 

I know this isn’t an harmonious piece of writing; it has bumps and potholes, a lot like life, and sure enough like the streets of Los Angeles. 

 ***

Joseph Campbell says that when we are on our path, when we follow our bliss, the universe opens doors where there were only walls. When I focus on the doors that haven’t opened, I am blind to the many that have, that do, every day. When I look back to nine years ago I can see them all, and I can also see those I have forced with the wrong key. 

A few days ago I drove by Cheremoya Avenue. Ben and I, in fact, have just bought a house in adjacent Los Feliz, not far from my old apartment.

Maybe the doors on our path also stay open for when we return and revisit before moving on once again. 

Happy Anniversary, Los Angeles. 

 

 

Show me the place where you want your slave to go
Show me the place I’ve forgotten I don’t know
Show me the place where my head is bendin’ low
Show me the place where you want your slave to go