how to stop wanting curtains
an L.A. Story
I spent much of 2024 with an extreme yearning for curtains, but it recently vanished.
Perhaps this yearning was brought on because I’d spent more time inside my studio apartment than any other year, or maybe peer pressure, regardless, I’d become obsessed. I’d spend my free time poring over interior design videos, and combing through doom scrolling Facebook Marketplace.
In the first episode of this year, I told Dr. Patti that I’d just made a list of 25 things I wanted to do in 2025. She asked if I’d read one out loud and picked a number 1-25. There it was: 17. Hang Curtains.
In All Fours, Claire is an interior designer, a character who transforms the narrator’s room into a magical space. I’d convinced myself that, if I could be my own Claire, I too could transform and all my problems would disappear—if only I had curtains, I’d have a new life.
This delusional subconscious thought process went something like:
once I finally have curtains, then I’ll be a success…maybe it’ll turn me into an influencer or a lottery winner, but somehow it will bring financial security and creative fulfillment, which will lead me to a tight knit friend group, an ideal dream boyfriend, and I’ll entertain, and oh and I’ll be spiritually enlightened all because of drapes…duh…
And instead of going after any of the things I hoped curtains would lead to, I thought, nah… let me focus on the curtains…
So, I spent years, longing for them, until a recent Wednesday, when I opened my eyes to orange light pouring in through my giant, bare windows. I’d just woken up from a dream where people were smoking inside. Half awake, my first thought was how vivid the dream was. I swore I could smell smoke…
I noticed my power was out and remembered the wind I heard and fire I saw out my window before I fell asleep. Then I read this and suddenly… I didn’t give a fuck about curtains. All of my problems were ‘right-sized.’
It feels like writing about LA isn’t my story to tell as a non-victim and because I didn’t grow up here. But it’s the only thing that’s felt relevant, so when reading people processing their relationship to this city, I considered mine.
I’m still in awe that I live here. Growing up in the Midwest, the furthest west I’d traveled was Chicago, so living in Tinseltown wasn’t even conceivable to me as a kid. So while I don’t have a history in this city, I want a future here more than I wanted curtains.
I arrived with only a carry-on suitcase, then shipped three boxes of belongings from Brooklyn when I decided to stay. I often joke that I have like four things, but as I saw houses turn to ash, I realized how important four of them are to me.
I thought how I’d feel if I lost my guest book (a wall with all my friends' heights), the chairs Heidi carried with bungee ties at the flea market. The 1968 Funny Girl playbill from Stella, the collages Captain wraps presents in, postcards from Sacha,
’s cake, ’s tiny ceramic Blundstone, which she deemed my ‘cartoon character shoe... I could go on, and that’s the point… I can go on and on about my belongings because they are here.Obviously it’s not about the items but the sentiment they conjure, so I cried for friends who lost their homes while I packed a bag to flee from mine. I knew my proximity to a fire, but I never considered that by the time I woke up, my phone would buzz in the tone of an amber alert with an evacuation notice. Or that my neighbors down the street would tell me they’d left at 5 a.m. for Palm Springs while I was dreaming of inside smokers.
When I opened Instagram next I saw that like them, most friends had fled to where they’re from or places away from the smoke.
I stayed… in a city that, despite living in for nearly five years, feels unknown outside of my neighborhood.
Three days after I got here, I also had to quickly decide whether to stay or go as the Pandemic lockdown began. I stayed…until businesses I’d never been to reopened and I could see the bottom of faces I’d met with masks on. I made acquaintances who’d become friends, and after bouncing around the neighborhood for 6 months, found a place. My studio apartment was once a classroom in a school built in 1904 —which feels fitting since I’ve learned a lot in it.
I’ve participated more here than anywhere I’ve ever lived— and little by little, it felt more familiar… sometimes even like home…
I started to say, ‘California is the best state’ and feel envious of any friends who grew up here—how they got to have recess in January without snow pants and never knew the hassle of scraping ice off a car in below 0 temperatures before school daily for months. Like clockwork, every January, I'll have a moment when I realize I’m outside coatless, and I remember the majority of my Januaries were spent shivering. Given a choice, winter is not for me.
I’ve lost power in ice storms and seen trees struck down by lightning in Michigan, but I’ve never experienced the terror of wildfire—watching my friends in Nichols Canyon evacuate, shaking, or friends' kids losing their schools.
As I saw houses I admired turned to ash, places I spent time in completely gone, I grieved for friends and strangers who lost items that anchor them to their identities: journals, marked-up books, and worn-in t-shirts.
There are items I can’t even think of right now to grab for my go-bag, but months from now, when I discover them, I’ll be grateful they didn’t burn.
The morning when I got the evacuation alert, I scurried around, grabbing my grandpa’s coaching jacket, my favorite skirt I found at a garage sale—the one I told
all about, and my passport. I had time to consider what to grab when so many had to rush out with just the clothes they were wearing. And I physically could buzz around, climb up into my highest closet shelf and find what I wanted, when just a few months ago I would've been crutching around attempting to pack. I thought of how trapped I’d have felt not being able to drive anywhere due to my broken right leg, and of all those facing this disaster alongside injury or disability.
While my power was out, I asked neighbors leading questions like, “There’s no way it’ll cross the 110 right? we’re fine?”
They’d reassure me but end it with some version of:
“But you never know, this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”
This only calmed my nervous system temporarily, until I'd need to ask another, hoping they’d give me the answer I wanted:
“We’re safe, unpack your go bag, go on a hike because the air quality’s super too!”
So, I sat in a pool of my anxieties. Usually I find relief on long walks or climbing up a hill, but I tried to follow the air quality consensus to not do that. When I couldn't take it anymore I grabbed a mask and ventured out, and before I got far, a lady pulled over asking if I needed a ride.
"Oh no, I’m just on a walk,” I said.
Like a good neighbor, she was there to lecture me about the air. I thanked her as if it was completely new information to me and I walked home sort of holding my breath.
Maybe it was the lack of oxygen, but I began uncontrollably laughing… at what I’m not sure… the wildness of it all… at myself and how merely 48 hours before, I’d walked this route to relieve a low-grade panic brought on by anticipating how busy the first week back from the holidays would feel. Well joke’s on me… none of it happened, yet I'd spent an entire walk worrying about how to fit a goodbye dinner, a birthday party, a podcast recording, and a meeting, that would all be cancelled.
I never would’ve guessed I’d be wearing a mask and getting stopped by a kind stranger for being out walking. I laughed at how often I forget that what I worry about may not even happen… And how often I miss what’s in front of me now by worrying about later.
Mary Schmich put it best in her 1999 “Chicago Tribune” essay, Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young:
“Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.”
I first read that when I was young so it was, in fact, wasted on me, but it's starting to sink in. Now, I’m old enough to know I don’t know anything, including what’s around the corner. There could be a pandemic, a giant fire, or a new friend or a decent day, or an accident or a death we never know and worrying can’t change the outcome.
*I wrote this the week of and the weeks since, I did what I could to be useful. I gathered the resources I could, I Venmoed, I helped get clothing to people, and delivered food. Although time has passed it’s just as important now and some relief efforts are slowing—but we can still help—this week’s list is of ways to help (both in LA and beyond).
I’d been saying I needed to get out of my neighborhood more, but the night as multiple fires burned I was just grateful for it. I now know how I’d feel if anything happened to the people, places, hikes, dogs, and nature in it. It was easy for me to have empathy when it all felt so close but what the last month in LA has reminded me is that: we never know what’s happening in other people’s lives.
I keep thinking how someone walking by a restaurant sees me, having a relatively normal day—while they are having the worst day of their life and I’d never know when we smile politely.
The LA fires magnify the melancholic truth that this is a constant…how one person having a neutral day is next to someone who just got broken up with, and next to them someone in chronic pain, and to their right is a man who lost his mom, and next to him a girl who got a promotion, and so on. I’m reminding myself that even if I try to connect I still may not ever know the ways people are struggling or succeeding fully.
I don’t know what’s going on with you, and you don’t know what’s going on with me, just the pockets we share—a small sliver of reality—so I attempt to be gentle, to them, to you, and to me.
And hopeful for good pockets in the midst of it all.
your friend,
kd
LA FIRE RELIEF EFFORTS:
Here:
* Rogue Foods - if you’re here you can help drive. Everyone is so nice. (You can still help)
*Pasadena Humane Society: Over 200 displaced animals.
Everywhere:
*Vetted list of Go Fund Me’s of fire victims.
My friend Jessie is doing incredible organizing and relief efforts: help here.
*A fun way to support is getting tickets to the LA Mutual Aid Raffle organized by my close friend Lauren Lotz. Browse the 33 baskets here. They include my personal growing kits and zines as well as items from many podcast guests and brands I love. Info here!
LATEST PODCAST EPISODE JAMES IS BACK
Images: L.A. Story (1991) and A Tale of Springtime (1990)
PS. if you read the last dispatch … I am still going to do part 2 of it eventually! : )
I read this twice and plan to read it more. So profound and moving, with deep insights. A gifted writer.
Beautiful <3