Transported

I took a mini roadtrip this weekend to visit a friend, a 36 hour jaunt that felt like a much longer getaway.  I feel transported, as if I I was gone for days exploring a distant land.  I can only contribute this restoration to true ease and authentic connection.  Beautiful surroundings, inspiring conversation, and an early summer heatwave marked this last weekend in June.  This has been a month full of challenges, and also oodles of joy.  I'm grateful for all of it.

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Grand Park Frolic

For the past year I've been wanting to go back to the fountain at Grand Park at night with my camera.  I wasn't the only one with this idea.  The grounds were littered with dozens of photographers steadying their cameras atop tripods.  I'm not very satisfied with my pics, but I'm inspired to go back, and experiment with the light, water and movement.

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Summer in the City

Bollywood dancing at Civic Center Plaza, and a jazz band at California Plaza was a good excuse to escape the heat and and embark on an early evening adventure downtown.  Traffic and finding parking was avoided by taking the subway.  All in all, it was a very pleasant evening spent strolling, people watching and sipping wine from plastic cups.

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Currency of Love

Mad Men finales are always bittersweet.  This season ended with one of the most memorable client meetings in the history of the series rivaling Don's pitch for Kodak's Carousel in season one.  Not coincidentally, both episodes took place days prior to Thanksgiving.  During a pitch to the executives from Hershey, Don painted a Rockwellian portrait of his childhood linked to the memory of eating the iconic confection.  And then he course corrected the lie and told the truth.  The harsh truth of being raised an orphan in a whorehouse, and if he collected enough change from the johns' pockets "while they screwed", the girls would give him a dime for a Hershey's bar.  “And I would eat it, alone in my room, with great ceremony, feeling like a normal kid.”  The confession, along with a season of workplace negligence, got him fired, but it also moved him closer to redemption and salvaging his broken relationship with his daughter Sally.  The last image, the long shadows of Don and his children walking to a decaying crumbling house, the whorehouse from his past, made me wistful.  The innocence of the early 60s have certainly passed these characters and the country.  I was born in this tumultuous decade, my life forever shaped by these same movements and historic upheavals.  A part of me wants to hold on to the earlier seasons when Don's darkness was swept under the carpet and his charm hid his dark interior.  Don's drinking was sport, now it's alcoholism.  He is beyond the crossroads of who he may or may not become.  He is a drunk womanizer, an absentee father, a cheater, an irresponsible business partner, a selfish human being.  The die has been cast.  Don has been on this course for six seasons, as the main title sequence has foreshadowed from the beginning.  Will hitting  bottom change him?  Will he be able to pick up the pieces of his life, and if so, who will be there to greet the new version of Don? The Daily Beast's interview with Matt Weiner sheds some light on this season and the future which is all we have until next summer when the final season begins.

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Sailing

Incredibly grateful for Wiley's offer to take me and LN sailing.  There was no better way to round out her visit than a jaunt to the beach, and a ride on the ocean.  June gloom burned off early in the day as we sailed to Malibu, hung out with dolphins, ate lunch and breathed in the sea air.  A perfect day.  A perfect week.

The East Side

LN's visit has been a wonderful catalyst for me to take advantage of all that Los Angeles has to offer.  At a leisurely pace we are covering lots of territory.  Today was dedicated to the east side, beginning   with much anticipated Thai massages in Los Feliz, followed by stellar people watching at the  Silverlake Farmer's Market, and then a scrumptious lunch at Baco Mercat (I'm in desperate search of the caramelized cauliflower recipe).  Downtown is still a neighborhood in transition, trendy restaurants and galleries gave way to desolate stretches of concrete as we meandered to Grand Park.  The Spring street entrance was vacant with the exception of one or two picnic blankets on the vast swatch of grass.  Towards Grand, the park came alive as children squealed in delight in the flowing pools of the fountain.  We returned to Hollywood for a sunset hike in the hills, followed by another amazing meal at Hollywood Thai.

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Urban Jazz

A middle eastern picnic, red wine, and jazz at LACMA on a warm summer solstice evening.

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Southern California Extremes

Took the rotating aerial tram to the San Jacinto Wilderness to escape the triple digit heat in the desert.  Rising 8500 feet above the desert floor, crisp 70 degree coolness greeted us.  The air was sweet with the scent of sugar pines and white fir whose large trunks dwarfed us on the trail.  The desert below was a dusty grid speckled with tiny windmills and neighborhoods. 

Returning to sea level, we swam in the fading afternoon light and napped before making a pilgrimage to Pappy and Harriet's for some BBQ, live music, and pool.