Lifestyle
I stopped driving on L.A.'s chaotic freeways. How do I get over this painful anxiety?
My New Year’s resolution this year is simple. This weekend — my first back in L.A. after visiting family for the holidays — I will drive to the 101 freeway entrance by my house and I will … get on it.
Simple as that. But far easier said than done.
I haven’t driven on the freeway in more than two years — I’ve been too afraid. I’ve rarely even ridden as a passenger on the freeway, with someone else behind the wheel, and when I do, I sit on my hands so my fingers won’t tremble.
Fear of driving on the freeway is hardly uncommon — and for good reason. Headlines reporting fatal accidents and police pursuits ending in deadly crashes are more commonplace than ever in L.A.
But here’s the thing: It’s an entirely new phenomenon for me. Living in Los Angeles as a journalist, I’ve fearlessly traversed the city’s vast thicket of freeways for decades. My work took me from the mountains to the desert to the sea. Years ago, I dated someone in San Diego and endured the three-hour drive on the 5 south every other Friday for about a year. And all with relative ease.
So what changed? My brain, basically.
The pandemic was rough, in infinitely varied ways, for everyone. For me, on top of the stresses of the public health crisis and its myriad economic and social repercussions, I experienced a series of losses in succession, sometimes with just weeks between them. And it didn’t let up for about two years. My grief manifested on the freeway, where I’d have small, then more pronounced, panic attacks — something totally new to me.
Here’s what happened: In early 2020, a sibling of mine tragically died. Later that year, my partner and I broke up. We’d been together for several years and it was a significant loss. This was in the early days of the pandemic, when many of us were wiping down our groceries and staying inside for days on end. I was doing that too, but now alone in my apartment.
I don’t have children but my cats provided comfort during that period. (For some of us, our pets are our kids.) Then they both died too, one after the other — unexpectedly. The first, only 8 years old, suffered a violent and painful death. My second cat, much older and more fragile, witnessed it and became so anxious afterward that she got sick and passed away only months later.
The silence in my home, after that, was unsettling: no scritch-scratching of claws on hardwood floors or chomping of kibble in the background as I pecked away at my keyboard writing articles. I’d sip coffee in the mornings, taking some comfort in the lush view of the greenery on my deck. Until nearly all the plants died in a heatwave.
Then my parked car was smashed during a hit-and-run. Insurance paid to fix it. But then the car was targeted by catalytic converter thieves. Again, insurance covered the repairs. But when, several months later, the thieves struck again, my insurance company declared the 14-year-old Honda a total loss.
When the tow truck came to haul my car away, I fell into the driver’s burly arms and cried. I’d had that trusty, beat-up Honda longer than any romantic relationship, and at that moment, it felt like all I had left.
Given this sustained succession of emotional gut punches, my central nervous system was on high alert. A car door would slam outside and I’d jump, my body bracing tensely: “What next?”
That feeling manifested — exaggeratedly so — driving on the freeway. I held it together in all areas of my life, but the freeway became a release valve for my pent-up grief. Instead of seeing the big picture while driving, getting into the flow of traffic, I saw too much detail. The freeway was a dangerous, kinetic collage of spinning wheels and whirling, sparking hubcaps and rectangular hunks of metal flying forward, any piece of which, at any instant, could crash into me. It was like at the start of a billiard game, when the cue breaks the racked balls with a fiery crack, sending the multicolored striped and solid orbs flying in all directions. That’s how I saw traffic. Panic.
The freeway was a dangerous, kinetic collage of spinning wheels and whirling, sparking hubcaps.
The lane I was driving in felt constricting and narrow; trucks on either side of me felt hulking and ominous. My jaw clenched, my breath quickened, my teeth chattered. And my heart pounded in my chest.
It wasn’t a choice so much as survival — I could not drive, safely, on the freeway anymore. I made adjustments, slipping like water around rocks. I changed my Waze settings to “avoid freeways” and took surface streets everywhere instead. I took Ubers or carpooled with friends if the drive was too long on surface streets. If headed especially far, I took a train.
I should add that I don’t particularly like to drive. Nor would anyone close to me say I’m good at it. Before L.A., I’d only lived in walkable cities with active public transportation systems: Philadelphia, San Francisco, Tokyo, Boston. But I certainly never feared driving.
And for those who have always feared freeway driving, it’s understandable. Traffic-related deaths in Los Angeles have been on the rise in recent years, at their highest point in two decades. In 2022, 312 people died in traffic accidents, according to the Los Angeles Police Department’s most recent data. That’s a 5% jump from 2021 and a 29% jump from 2020.
Perhaps the most disconcerting part was that my newfound freeway phobia sparked something of an identity crisis: I am not a fragile or fearful person. I take risks, I speak up for myself, I have a sense of agency. I don’t recognize this new, tentative version of myself. I’m confused by her, ashamed. Who is she? How do I get back to the self I identify with? Does she even still exist?
I’ve since healed from those aforementioned losses and am feeling infinitely revived in my personal life. New cats, new boyfriend, new car. But, oddly, the freeway fear has stuck.
“It’s such a normal human impulse when you’ve gone through tragedy and loss,” says L.A. author and psychotherapist Claire Bidwell Smith. “You’re seeing the world through a lens where the unexpected looms around every corner and something catastrophic can happen at any moment. Your life was going along and then: Bam! Bam! Bam! You’re scrambling to hold onto something, so you hold onto ‘How can I predict this, control it in some way?’ But we can’t control the world in the way we would like to, so we get stuck in this catastrophic place.”
Panic attacks in cars are especially common, Bidwell Smith adds. Her theory? “The car is a space where you’re often alone, a quiet private space, and all these thoughts, some of the stuff we’ve been pushing away, start to gurgle up.”
I haven’t talked openly about my freeway phobia much, not even to family. Until recently — and nearly everyone I’ve spoken to about it had experienced something similar or knew someone who had. I was at dinner recently with two journalist friends. One of them said she developed flying anxiety after her father died, something that dissipated over time. The other said her sister in Toronto developed a fear of driving on the freeway after their father died — she still hasn’t gotten over it.
Bidwell Smith says that after her own parents died, she developed a fear of flying and became fixated on her health. A client developed a fear of riding on elevators after his wife died.
How many more people are there like us in L.A.?
“It’s very common,” says Sarah Caliboso-Soto, director of the Telebehavioral Health Clinic at USC’s School of Social Work, which provides counseling for driving anxiety among other mental health issues. “Grief itself can be a very traumatic experience, and when people are driving, in particular, their senses are more heightened. And you can experience anxieties as a result.”
My period of avoiding freeways wasn’t all bad. I traversed neighborhoods I’d never otherwise pass through in L.A., gaining a better understanding of how the city connects. I got lost plenty, on zigzaggy Waze routes, but that had its upsides too. I stumbled on a collection of street murals, on remote side streets, in the downtown L.A. warehouse district. I found an available apartment for rent, for a friend, in Jefferson Park, a gem of a neighborhood filled with old Craftsman homes. I stopped several times for roadside fruit at different points around the city, wolfing down chili-spiked mango, drenched in lime juice, from behind the wheel.
But I long for my freedom again, to be unhindered by an emotional impediment. I miss the person I once was and ache to embody her again. It may not happen all at once; likely it will be a slow process, one freeway ramp at a time.
Sen. Tillis To Kristi Noem
ICE Killings Are Like Dog You Killed
Published
Fireworks on Capitol Hill … Sen. Thom Tillis ripped into DHS Secretary Kristi Noem during a congressional hearing … comparing American citizens killed by immigration agents to a dog she killed.
Check out the video … the Republican Senator from North Carolina says Noem has shown terrible leadership and decision-making as Trump‘s DHS Secretary.
AP
Tillis says the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by ICE and Border Patrol remind him of a passage from Noem’s book … where she recalls killing a dog she brought on a hunting trip.
Noem said the 14-month-old dog, Cricket, was misbehaving … so she led the dog to a gravel pit and shot her.
X/@DHSgov
Sen. Tillis told her straight up … “Those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment. Not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis. We’re an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership. And you’ve demonstrated anything but that.”
In 2021, Zhao made history as the first woman of color to win the best director Oscar for her film Nomadland. Her Oscar-nominated drama Hamnet has made $70 million worldwide.
Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
It took a very special kind of spirit to make Hamnet, which is nominated for best picture at this year’s Academy Awards. Chloé Zhao brought her uniquely sensitive, mind-body approach to directing the fictionalized story about how William Shakespeare was inspired to write his masterpiece Hamlet.
Zhao adapted the screenplay from a novel by Maggie O’Farrell, and for directing the film, she’s now nominated for an Oscar. She could make history by becoming the first woman to win the best director award more than once.
Zhao says she believes in ceremonies and rituals, in setting an intention, a mood, a vibration for any event. Before Hamnet premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, she led the audience in a guided meditation and a breathing exercise.
Zhao also likes to loosen up, like she did at a screening of Hamnet in Los Angeles last month, when she got the audience to get up and dance with her to a Rihanna song.
She, her cast and crew had regular dance parties during the production of Hamnet. So for our NPR photo shoot and interview at a Beverly Hills hotel, I invited her to share some music from her playlist. She chose a track she described as “drones and tones.”
Our photographer captured her in her filmy white gown, peeking contemplatively from behind the filmy white curtains of a balcony at the Waldorf Astoria.
Zhao says she believes in ceremonies and rituals, and makes them a part of her filmmaking process.
Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
Then Zhao and I sat down to talk.
“I had a dream that we were doing this interview,” I told her. “And it started with a photo shoot, and there was a glass globe –”
“No way!” she gasped.
It so happens that on the desk next to us, was a small glass globe — perhaps a paperweight.
I told her that in my dream, she was looking through the globe at some projected images. “We were having fun and it was like we didn’t want it to stop,” I said.
“Oh, well, me and the globe and the lights on the wall: they’re all part of you,” Zhao said. “They’re your inner crystal ball, your inner Chloé.”
“Inner Chloé?” I asked. “What is the inner Chloé like?”
“I don’t know, you tell me,” she said. “Humbly, from my lineage and what I studied is that everything in a dream is a part of our own psyche.”
Dreams and symbols are very much a part of Zhao’s approach to filmmaking, which she describes as a magical and communal experience. She said it’s all part of her directing style.
Chloé Zhao used painting and dance to connect with actors on the set of her latest film Hamnet.
Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
“If you’re captain of any ship, you are not just giving instructions; people are also looking to you energetically as well,” she explained. “Whether it’s calmness, it’s groundedness, it’s feeling safe: then everyone else is going to tune to you.” Zhao says it has taken many years to get to this awareness. Her own journey began 43 years ago in Beijing, where she was born. She moved to the U.S. as a teen, and studied film at New York University where Spike Lee was one of her teachers. She continued honing her craft at the Sundance Institute labs — along with her friend Ryan Coogler and other indie filmmakers.
Over the years, Zhao’s film catalogue has been eclectic — from her indie debut Songs My Brothers Taught Me, set on a Lakota Sioux reservation, to the big-budget Marvel superhero movie Eternals. She got her first best director Oscar in 2021 for the best picture winner Nomadland. Next up is a reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“A creative life,” she notes, “is not a linear experience for me.”
Zhao still lingers over the making of Hamnet, a very emotional story about the death of a child. During the production, Zhao says she used somatic and tantric exercises and rituals to open and close shooting days.
She also invited her lead actors Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley to help her set the mood on set. They danced, they painted, they meditated together.
“She created an atmosphere where everybody who chose to step in to tell this story was there for a reason that was deeply within them,” actress Jessie Buckley told me.
Buckley is a leading contender for this year’s best actress Oscar. She said that to prepare for her very intense role as William Shakespeare’s wife, Zhao asked her to write down her dreams “as a kind of access point, to gently stir the waters of where I was feeling.”
Buckley sent Zhao her writings, and also music she felt was “a tone and texture of that essence.”
That kind of became the ritual of how they worked together, Buckley said. “And not just the cast were moving together, but the crew were and the camera was really creating dynamics and a collective unconscious.”
Filmmaker and Hamnet producer Steven Spielberg calls Zhao’s empathy her superpower.
Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
That was incredibly useful for creating Hamnet — a story about communal grief. Steven Spielberg, who co-produced the film, called Zhao’s empathy her superpower.
“In every glance, in every pause and every touch, in every tear, in every single moment of this film, every choice that Chloé made is evidence of her fearlessness,” Spielberg said when awarding Zhao a Directors Guild of America award. “In Hamnet, Chloé also shows us that there can be life after grief.”
Zhao says it took five years and a midlife crisis for her to develop the emotional tools she used to make Hamnet.
“I hope it could give people a two-hour little ceremony,” she told me. “And in the end, I hope that a point of contact can be made. That means that there’s a heart opening. But it will be painful, right? Because when your heart opens, you feel all the things you usually don’t feel. And then a catharsis can emerge.”
As our interview time came to a close, I told Zhao I have my own little ritual at the end of every interview; I record a few minutes of room tone, the ambient sound of the space we’re in. It’s for production purposes, to smooth out the audio.
Zhao knew just what I meant. She told me a story about her late friend Michael “Wolf” Snyder who was her sound recordist for Nomadland. “He said to me, ‘I don’t always need it, but just so you know, I am going to watch you. And when I tell that you are a little frazzled, I’m going to ask for a room tone … just to give you space.’” she recalled. “‘And if you feel like you need the silence space, you just look at me, nod. I’ll come ask for a room tone.’”
I closed our interview ceremony with that moment of silence, a moment of peace, for director Chloé Zhao.
Lifestyle
This spring, have a tea ceremony inside of an art installation and shop the latest Givenchy
Givenchy by Sarah Burton introduces the Snatch
Givenchy’s “The Snatch” handbag.
(Marc Piasecki / Getty Images)
Echoing the designer’s ready-to-wear sculptural designs, the Snatch from Givenchy by Sarah Burton is sensually shaped by the contours of the person who carries it. Its supple leather, fluid silhouette and three sizes allow it to slip effortlessly and intimately into the hand, over the shoulder or across the body. Now available. givenchy.com
Guess Jeans opens new L.A. store
Guess Jeans store interior.
(Josh Cho)
In a move familiar to many millennials these days, Guess Jeans has returned home in its 45th year. The new flagship store in West Hollywood is both a return to its California roots and an envisioning of its future still ahead. While the brand may be an established icon, the store boldly reimagines the retail space as a living laboratory for design, craftsmanship and collaboration, with dedicated workshop and customization spaces. 8700 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. guess.com
Louis Vuitton’s new Color Blossom collection
Louis Vuitton’s new Color Blossom collection highlights sodalite.
(Louis Vuitton)
Taylor Swift’s sky may be opalite, but the starry blue hues in the new jewels of Louis Vuitton’s Color Blossom collection belong to sodalite. Rarely used in jewelry, the dark navy of sodalite adds an unexpected layer of depth to Color Blossom’s existing luminous gemstone lineup. Sun and star motifs rendered in gold enhance the gem’s night sky coloring, while the classic flower designs celebrate the 130th anniversary of the Louis Vuitton Monogram. Sodalite pieces available March 6, entire collection available April 4. louisvuitton.com
Loro Piana debuts Library of Knits
Loro Piana’s Library of Knits comes in over 20 shades.
(Lora Piana)
L.A.’s (many) winter showers bring spring wildflowers, and a bouquet of Loro Piana’s new Library of Knits fits right into the vibrant spectacle. The exquisitely soft cashmere pieces in classic styles now come in over 20 shades inspired by Sergio Loro Piana’s personal wardrobe. With a spectrum ranging from blues and greens to corals and creams, it’s hard to choose just one for a frolic in the fields. Now available. loropiana.com
Margesherwood X Peanuts
The Margesherwood X Peanuts collaboration features instantly recognizable motifs.
(Marge Sherwood)
Love is famously in the air this time of year, apparently even for cartoon characters. This enduring love is illustrated (literally) in the Margesherwood X Peanuts collaboration. Inspired by the heart-fluttering love letters Sally writes to Linus, the designs feature instantly recognizable motifs that marry the Peanuts’ charm with Margesherwood’s refined silhouettes. The zig-zag of that famous yellow shirt winkingly graces a crescent baguette, while the black stripes of Linus’s red red shirt wrap around a slouchy shoulder bag. For the true heads and lovers, there’s even a petite hobo emblazoned with Sally’s pet name for Linus: “FOR MY SWEET BABBOO.” Now available. margesherwood.com
Ryan Preciado at Hollyhock House
Ryan Preciado’s site-responsive “Diary of a Fly” at Hollyhock House features Oaxacan-woven textiles.
(Roman Koval)
Ryan Preciado’s new site-responsive installation at Hollyhock House, “Diary of a Fly,” is titled after a late-1930s musical composition by Béla Bartók that imitates the frenzied pace of a fly — a fitting name since his show reconceptualizes the experience of the springtime pest flitting around a house. Instead of hovering around overripe fruit or stalking a trash can long neglected, however, viewers are invited to take in Preciado’s Oaxacan-woven textiles and brightly colored sculptures situated throughout the city’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site. Open through April 25. 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles. hollyhockhouse.org
Veronica Fernandez at Anat Ebgi
Veronica Fernanadez’s “Prey” filters childhood memories through experience and emotion.
(Veronica Fernandez)
In the figurative paintings of Veronica Fernandez’s first solo exhibition, “Prey,” the artist’s childhood is recalled through dreamlike and fantastical scenes, with memories filtered through experience and emotion. Many of her works place a child at the center of the scene among family, friends and caretakers, who usually appear shadow-like at the edges of the paintings. As a kid, Fernandez endured periods of homelessness. But rather than depict a childhood of adversity, her paintings empower the kids within them to claim their own space, imbuing her memories with strength and light. Open through April 4. 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. anatebgi.com
Dior launches J’Adore Intense
Dior’s J’Adore Intense captures the scent of solar flowers with Rihanna as its muse.
(J’Adore)
Florals for spring can be groundbreaking, especially when they’re created with none other than Rihanna as their muse. Dior’s J’Adore Intense captures the scent of solar flowers — jasmine, ylang-ylang, rose, violet — right before they burst into fruit. The result is a warm, bold, addictive fragrance that drips with sensuality and femininity, down to the curves of its signature gold and glass figure-eight amphora. In other words, it’s Rihanna in a bottle. Available now. dior.com
Rocky’s Matcha X Oscar Tuazon at Morán Morán
Rocky’s Matcha hosts Japanese tea ceremonies in an ensō-inspired tea house from Oscar Tuazon at Morán Morán.
(Stade New York)
The single, uninhibited brushstroke of the ensō, the circular form in Zen art, serves as a record of a moment. Commissioned by Rocky’s Matcha, Oscar Tuazon’s “Circle House” at Morán Morán shares both the ensō’s form and its call to mindfulness. In the artist’s tea house, constructed from cardboard, wood and tatami mats, architecture is inseparable from ritual: visitors will soon be able to partake in a Japanese tea ceremony inside the installation, thereby participating in a choreography of attention not unlike the act of gliding an ink brush across a sheet of washi. Open through December 31. 641 N. Western Ave. Los Angeles. Subscribe to rocky’s newsletter for tea ceremony information. rockysmatcha.com and moranmorangallery.com
Celebrate Mr. Wash’s new book, “Artists in Space”
Celebrate the launch of Mr. Wash’s new book of studio visits and interviews with other L.A. artists.
(Mr Wash)
Make your first BBQ of the season a meaningful one at the Art By Wash Studio & Community Center, where Compton artist and criminal justice advocate, Mr. Wash, will celebrate the release of his book “Artists in Space.” Proceeds from the book, which features interviews and studio visits with 20 Angeleno residents, go toward establishing the new community center where individuals returning home from incarceration will have access to art classes, creative residencies and housing. Mr. Wash will be in conversation with Patrisse Culllors and Evan Pricco (co-publisher and founder of the Unibrow) as well as displaying new works. The event is on March 7 from 2-6 p.m. 15 W. Rosecrans Ave., Compton. artbywash.com
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