City To City

(I've made a correction to the original post. I had said that the Iliad Bookshop was closed. It's still very open. It just moved a few blocks away.)

In the summer of 1995, I got the phone call telling me my father had died very early one Tuesday morning. The call stirred me out of sleep and sent me into the world changed, confused, and, most of all, very sad.

I usually picture myself alone when I got the message. But I wasn't alone. My then-girlfriend was next to me when I got the news. And though she had to leave for work soon after, she did give me the requisite sympathy and support. I don't know why but I usually delete her from the memory.

Mostly, from that day and the day after, I remember where I traveled. Sure, there were the phone calls to work, to relatives and friends. Sure, there were tears. But I remember specific destinations, places I traveled alone (mostly). Cities.

I did a lot of driving around on that Tuesday and Wednesday. It didn't occur to me until today why I chose to get in my car and go away.

I was living in North Hollywood, just down the street from Odyssey Video and it's unrelated neighbor, the Iliad Bookshop. The former specialized in porn; the latter in fine literature and rare books. My first move, after the phone calls, was to get coffee and read the paper. I needed routine and back then, the coffee/paper routine was just starting to take shape (it continues today.) I drove down Camarillo Street and Hollywood Way to Burbank, where, in a nondescript shopping center there was a little independent coffee shop, the name of which I can't remember. It was the name of a person. A woman's name. I remember getting a mocha and some kind of pastry. I remember reading about the Los Angeles Raiders' impending move to Oakland. I remember feeling numb (not about the Raiders). Today, that coffee shop is a Starbucks.

After coffee, I drove around the San Fernando Valley, sticking to the closer and uglier streets. There were Lankershim and Magnolia Boulevards. Cahuenga, Vineland, Tujunga, Moorpark. I went home to make some phone calls, making plans for lunch with my cousin and my then ex-girlfriend. We ended up eating Indian food in West L.A., at a place on Wilshire that still exists but no longer looks appetizing when I drive past. Eventually, just my cousin and I watched a movie in his UCLA dorm room. The fact that the main character - a Middle Eastern man in midlife crisis - looked a lot like my father made me a little sadder. But I liked the movie and appreciated the simplicity of a videotape in a dorm room in midday.

I couldn't sit still. I drove from one part of Los Angeles to another. I think I drove to my aunt and cousins' house in Anaheim. Maybe that was the next day. I just knew I didn't want to be home. Sitting. Thinking. Better to be in motion. In retrospect, laying on the couch with then-kitten Seymour may have been a better choice.

The day after the phone call, I went even farther. If there's one thing my father was known for, it was his lack of fear of change. He was a man who appreciated the movement from city to city. In his life, he went from Alexandria to Cairo, Hamburg, to Stockholm, back to Egypt, to (the suburbs of) New York and Philadelphia, to Minneapolis, to Singapore. Back to New Jersey for his funeral.

In my childhood, my father liked to take the family out for weekend drives. When we lived in New Jersey, we could often go into New York City. We went to comic book stores and Arab groceries. We went to Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. Maybe the Bronx. We went to the Guggenheim and the United Nations building. I remember all the flags in front of the U.N. I remember the tour inside, with the amazing little walkie talkie/headphone combinations that made seamless translation a possibility in 1974. When we lived in Pennsylvania, we drove to Philadelphia a few times but my Dad preferred New York and we'd take the two hours to go to the big city instead of the 45 minutes to go to the smaller one.

Sometimes, we'd even go farther. There were the relatives up in Wellsville, NY (near Buffalo). There was Florida. There was Montreal, where we toured the then nine-year-old Worlds Fair site. I remember futuristic architecture and amusement park rides that would never end. And signs in French and English. We would almost always drive. Eventually, there were flights - to Europe and Phoenix. But in the beginning, it was the car.

But I'm going back too far. This is about 1995, not 1976. The day after the phone call, I made the odd decision of driving to San Diego. I never thought about why but today it came to me. It seemed so obvious. I don't know why I hadn't figure it out before. Just as my father drove to other cities out of curiosity or boredom, I chose to drive to another city. And when you're in Los Angeles, the one place that qualifies as some other city is San Diego.

There was a lot of traffic on the way down there. I listened to sports talk radio as Raiders fans bemoaned the loss of their team. I may have listened to music but I don't remember a single song. Which is strange. When I got to San Diego, I just drove around and got lost. In retrospect, I realize I drove past the uglier parts of San Diego (Mission Valley, the northern suburbs) and didn't even get close to the cool parts of town. That didn't matter. I just wanted to drive. I don't think I did anything when I got there. After a while, I just drove back. Traffic was worse. The Raiders fans were angrier.

I got home late at night. I'm sure my cats missed me. There was a message from my boss, telling me to take my time before coming back to work. Eventually, there was a funeral on the other side of the country and applications to grad school (which took me to other cities). And today I still think of moving, from here to there. To new places and old ones. Planes replace cars. Can't sit still, probably should.

It was this song (specifically the line about the phone call in the morning) that got me thinking of all this stuff. I'll go back to thinking about other stuff, like my trip next week to another city, like my drive last weekend to Palm Springs. Meanwhile, in my home in (regular) Hollywood, Seymour sits around and doesn't go anywhere and looks pretty damn happy.