Life is Like a Jar of Pickles!

Dear Juliet

That title just popped into my head and I'm not even sure what it means yet! I'm also a little concerned you might be getting sick of all the Star Trek analogies but I'm afraid they just work perfectly.

At the moment, I'm quite content to be on shore leave while they're getting the bugs out of the new ship in Spacedock, and there's actually a good story about that from the first time I was in Hollywood.

But let's think about you.

Not a stretch, really.

I guess everything's been pulled apart in your head, turned upside down, hoovered, stuffed back in again and now it all needs time to settle. Possibly quite a lot of time.

However, I will be here and I am patient. It is simple, all I like in life is having you around. The best days where when I'd see something interesting and be able to tell you immediately. Forget Hollywood, Buffy and even Dru. That was what was important.

Remember that you were always worthy of all that I did over the years, and I could not have done it without you. That was always true, Kirk always needed his Spock and I guess these days that's pretty much carved in stone on the steps leading up to Sunset Boulevard.

One thought: if you're having trouble with any of this, and if you haven't done so already, I'd have a quiet word with James Marsters. I think he's a very kind patient guy, too; and a big Star Trek fan. He'd like these analogies, and I think he might be able to help.

So, one story from the past which might frame the future:

I first came to Hollywood in 1989 after a hard year's working holiday in Australia. Stayed in a backpacker's hostel near Venice beach and had my twenty-fourth birthday in that café opposite the Roosevelt Hotel. Casualties of War was on at the Chinese Theater, but Star Trek V was showing at The Fox.

Guess where I went?

It was a fleapit in those days and V is widely regarded as the worst of the original series of movies, but when you've crossed Australia for a solid year, done enough heavy work to kill a horse and against the odds got to Hollywood, you're less of a reviewer and more of a fellow traveller. In the opening sequence, Kirk climbs El Capitan in Yosemite and the effort it took him perfectly matched the effort I made crossing Australia.

Apart from the physical torture, I didn't know I was autistic so the whole experience pulled apart everything in my head, turned it all upside down, hoovered it and stuffed it back in again.

So I probably know how you feel.

Interestingly enough, the human brain has something called neuroplasticity, or the brain's lifelong ability to reorganise it's structure, functions and neural connections in response to learning, experience or injury.

I think the experience in Australia was so tough whatever passes for my brain had radically to rewire itself to enable me to survive; and it now looks like it retains this ability for life, not just into early adulthood. I wouldn't subject my worst enemy to what I went through in Oz, but I think it enabled me to function in modern society. My brain couldn't fix the autism, but if pushed hard enough it could compensate for it. I call it the backup hardware, referenced in Dear Miss Landau, p. 162.

With a bit of luck, your brain should be able to do a bit of rewiring without needing to work in a banana plantation in Queensland...

So I was walking around the Hollywood of 1989 without melting down while a future we could not know was forming around us. I'd been keeping a casual eye out for your father's performances for fourteen years by then and now I was getting to know Tinseltown.

I did occasionally wonder if we might unknowingly have walked past each other on the sidewalk at the time, but I think you were studying acting elsewhere although Pump Up the Volume and The Grifters were just around the corner.

It's a cliché, but Allah really does weaves the threads of men's destinies into many strange tapestries and life is like a box of chocolates. Or a jar of pickles.

  Just had a silly thought! Watching an old Buffy episode late on, hoping you'd do so at the same time. But no, the timings wouldn't work 😢. Darn, time is the fire in which we burn. I'd better not mention which film I got that from...

Then there was that time you sent me an emoji and I didn't know it was! That was cute.

Okay, a few more photos and I'm done for the day.

Have a good Sunday and take care.

Sunset Boulevard and Venice Beach, 1989.

The Fox and the Coffee Bean, 2024.

Darn, now I'm worrying about you again...