So unemployment is not agreeing with me.

I have been staying up later and later, waking up later and later, and feeling pretty unmotivated to do anything except read more about this whole thing with the leak and the CIA agent, and scour the archives of totally pointless sites like mycathatesyou.com. A site devoted to...you guessed it! Pictures of people's cats. I spent a whole afternoon doing that last week. Can you blame me?! There are like a million cats on there!!

I hit "rock bottom" yesterday night (or this morning, it was 5am) when I realized I had not left my apartment at all in over 24 hours. Seriously. I sat around all day (although I did rotate from sofa, to floor, to sofa), looking up one thing after another on Wikipedia, reading about my personality type, and eating trail mix. And cupcakes. To my credit, I did take a shower. And I straightened my hair, so I'd look good for the internet.

So, in this 5am moment of clarity, I decided that today was going to be different, that I'd get up at a decent hour, go out for lunch, and then to someplace I've been wanting to see. I also said that every night last week. But this time, I really meant it.

At the crack of 11:30 I was in the shower. I went and had lunch with a friend in Century City who works on the Fox lot, and he gave me a little tour. I just eat that shit up, so it was fun. Wish I were able to recognize some of the buildings.

And to further vanquish the depression that settled over me after spending all of Monday in my studio apartment, I decided to go hang out at the cemetery.

I went down to Hollywood Forever, which I've been wanting to visit ever since I saw a special on how its current owners restored the cemetry to its former glory, from the sad state of neglect it had fallen into. Here rest many greats, among them Rudolph Valentino, Fay Wray, "Bugsy," Mel Blanc, Peter Lorre, Cecil Demille, and Deedee Ramone.

I was more impressed upon by other graves, though.

There were several all covered in ceramic angels, candles, flowers, and pinwheels...graves made into tiny camps of grief by mothers who I'm sure were not ready to part with their "baby." They belonged to young men between fifteen and twenty-one, all Latino and all looking gangsta in the picture on their tombstones. Several of them had 40s or cans of Miller High Life resting atop them. I have to wonder how they died. All I know is it wasn't from old age, and there are people who miss them A LOT. You can see these monuments clear across the lawns; I found Ernesto Vasquez with far greater ease than Jayne Mansfield. I took a picture of one that had "Homies" and a rosary on it. I imagined the dude's mom and his buddies paying their respects at the same time; one with a beer, the other with a crucifix.

There was also a long stretch where only infants were buried, many of them born and died on the same date. Toys and colorful signs covered the tiny graves, and hung in the ivy on the wall that rises up behind them. I took a picture of that, too.

At first I thought that these gaudy graves were an eyesore in an otherwise elegant and serene atmosphere; they were full of knick-knacks, in disarray. But the more of them I came across (with their little wooden benches sagging in from use), the more they seemed like what I would want my grave to be. Not that I'd want people to mourn me forever. Just that I'd like to be visited once in a while, and be cared for. Nothing is sadder than a grave in disrepair, or adorned by a vase of wilted flowers stinking of stale water and rot.

It was a beautiful day to visit the cemetery, and I think I'll go again. I don't know the last time I was able to think so clearly, or felt so peaceful. Hearing the sound of your solitary footfall in the coolness of a mausoleum gives you a strange kind of power. It gave me the realization that I can't hang onto things, that I have to let go and enjoy living and loving while I can. It was summed up best on a hand-written card next to an urn behind glass, not for anyone famous, just for a lady who had brown hair:

If you love something deeply, you never lose it, because it becomes a part of you.

Here are some of my photos from today. Here are everyone else's photos.