"bad" day at palm springs
eve babitz coined this title, i am simply reviving it in my own way
when i was a child, my mother approved heavily of palm springs much unlike la’s very own femme fatale, eve babitz—but it was all i knew during spring break. april would roll around and i wouldn’t even have to ask, i just knew to pack a bag and be ready to hop in the car on the first day and prepare myself for a two hour drive and resist the urge to ask “are we there yet?!” every five second because no, i had to be different and better than most annoying eight year olds who did so. how i knew we were almost there was when i saw the windmills—i’d glow with excitement and then i’d bear no shame asking if we were almost to our destination, to which my mom would share my excitement when she confirms my revelation.
but my god, the heat. it slaps you across the face the second you are about to exit your 60 degree hotel building and suddenly, i am soaking it in and understanding why meursault from albert camus’ the stranger…okay, we aren’t going to go there, actually. nonetheless, my point stands: the heat is that unpleasant and burdensome. i know i can be one to exaggerate (i’m a writer and an actress, to be fair) but i can absolutely guarantee it is nothing like you’ve ever felt before. it is 9 pm and still 100 degrees. it is the type of weather to spark irrational arguments over things you never thought you could argue about and then it causes you to grow sleepy before 9 pm. you grow silent until you drive past the street named after frank sinatra and laugh with your family about how it leads into an applebee’s and suddenly, all tension is forgotten. but then you get out of the car to eat at said applebee’s and the heat attacks once again. but this time, it’s another laugh, another lighthearted complaint about how unbearable it is, but a sense of community—you are in it together. my god the heat is making us suffer but at least we are suffering together, and in paradise! palm springs is the epitome of beautiful and even if it isn’t necessarily my scene, i have really learned to appreciate the beauty in every place i visit even if i could never imagine a life there. some places are just meant to be passed through, some places are temporary, some are forever. but that doesn’t mean any one is less beautiful than the other.
just like people, right? there is a plethora of people from my past that were only meant to pass through and i spent too much time mourning them when i should have been celebrating what they added to my life. i still reminisce upon them fondly and hold nothing against them for coming and going, at least not anymore. i know now that it was nothing against me. so, why would i hold it against them? i was taught things of such value and they served their purposes in my life, and i served my purposes in their lives. they may be distant memories, but ones i remember being warm. just like all the prettiest parts of palm springs, yes?
but sometimes, things can get too hot, too overbearing, just like here in palm springs. some people try to take things, and even destroy some of the comforting warmth that others have shown me and they truly believe they are doing the opposite. every couple of years or so they’ll try to slither back into my life but i will show the strength that took my entire life to build up to keep them out at all costs. my whole life i’ve spent practically living for others, and quite frankly my days of this have come to an end. it’s my life. i will not have anyone near me that emits the feeling of a 118 degree day. 90 degrees is even almost a bit too much, but nothing i can’t handle now.
i used to bear some serious guilt about this—it would weigh me down so greatly that i practically felt chained to my room to avoid these “friends” of mine. tears would trickle down my cheeks at the mere thought that i would run into any of these people. i would feel my skin pretty much melting from the anxiety of it all, and it didn’t help that my room resides right above the garage which already provides excessive amounts of sultry. somehow, in the pool with my family over these past few days on this trip, we have laughed about these people. “how did we not see it sooner?!” we all asked ourselves, barely able to contain our fits of laughter. but that’s the thing about these types of people, they want you to think they are the comforting kind of warmth—christmas morning, being covered in three blankets and burning to death, hot chocolate, a cozy knit sweater, an everlasting embrace. but really they are just palm springs minus all of the enchanting parts of it—they are the heat, they are the loud hotel lobbies with obnoxious business-people who came here for a week-long conference, they are the sand blowing through the wind that does not even ease the blow of the heat.
so if your loved ones, no matter the relationship you have with them, don’t radiate christmas morning, being covered in three blankets and not burning to death, hot chocolate, a cozy knit sweater, or an everlasting embrace, it’s time to leave them behind in the desert of your past, in which you have indeed deserted. and it’s time to take a dip in the pool to cool off from those relationships and to feel refreshment once again. our los angeles goddess, eve babitz, even wrote in her fictitious novel (which i am currently reading and believing to be more and more creative non-fiction) slow days, fast company, that “the only thing that makes things even slightly bearable is a friend who knows what you’re talking about.” and i simply couldn’t agree more.