All The Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season

Onto the meadow and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.

Make a new watermark on your excitement

And love.

Like a blooming night flower,

Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness

And giving

Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence

Lie beside an equator

In your heart.

Greet Yourself

In your thousand other forms

As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven

Are sitting around a fire

Chatting

While stitching themselves together

Into the Great Circle inside of

You.

Hafiz

Hollywood Reservoir

The Narrow Road to The Deep North

Richard Flannigan's book about Australian POWs in WWII who were tasked with the impossible, building a railroad from Siam to Burma under harrowing conditions,

 is a heart wrencher. 

The prose is poetic, and a beautiful contrast to the horrific tale he tells.

  A haunting love story is peppered through out.

The soul soars, the soul breaks.

“A good book, he had concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book.

 A great book compels you to reread your own soul. Such books were for him rare and, as he aged, rarer. Still he searched, one more Ithaca for which he was forever bound.”

“For the world did not change, this violence had always existed and would never be eradicated, men would die under the boot and fists and horror of other men until the end of time, and all human history was a history of violence.”  

“It's only our faith in illusions that makes life possible.

 It's believing in reality that does us in every time.”

No Show

An hour before my online hiking date, I went to review his profile

and found his account had been canceled.

Not a good sign.

The plan was to meet at high noon,

at the Travel Town parking lot in Griffith Park, southwest corner.

His suggestion.

He'd be in a black Mercedes. 

To go or not to go?

I had a strong feeling he wasn't going to show,

 but I went anyway.

Drove straight from a meeting in Santa Monica, and arrived early.

Crouching in the front seat of my car, I peeled off my Rag and Bone black jeans

and shimmied into my yoga pants.

I hadn't explored this part of the park before so
I thought, worse comes to worse, I'll experience a new trail.

As the minutes accumulated past noon,

 I wondered what makes someone just vanish from an online dating site.

Not interested, not ready, not available, not who you say are, in some type of crisis?

The possibilities are limitless, but why not send an email and properly cancel?

 Why just disappear?

Somewhere, was someone looking at the clock aware that they were standing me up?

At 12:10, I headed up the path from the parking lot.

It was steep, but I assumed it would connect to a trail.

It didn't.

 I kept ascending, vertically.

I would recover from getting blown off, but scaling the side of the mountain

was something that could have lasting consequences.

My heart racing, I cursed my anonymous date for

leading me to a trail head that, in fact, wasn't.

Sliding down the dry dirt I tried to secure my footing.

Looking down, I knew retracing my steps would be worse.

  I had no choice but to keep moving forward, or in this case upward.

I caught myself on the brink of panic, took a deep breath and forged ahead.

With dirt under my nails and a few splinters in my palm

I finally climbed onto a path, unscathed,

except for a slightly bruised ego

from being stood up.

Interiors

Solar Eclipse

From Elephant:

Whether you realize it or not, a new beginning and fresh start is happening around you.

 If you’re aware of this energy and open to the possibilities

 you might be able to see the potential in your own life.

 This is a great time to set intentions for yourself, make amends and look forward to new beginnings.

Taurus: Setting new long term goals is the emphasis of this system reboot for you.

 It’s time to start making a dream a reality.

This is also a great time to put yourself out there and join a new group of some sort.

 New and important friendships could also begin at this time.

 At the same time,

you may feel pulled in between the two arenas—wanting to be alone vs. being with others.

There is also opportunity to work through long standing issues.

Magic Hour

Longer Days, More Hours to Hike

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P

I heard about this book on a podcast with Lena Dunham.

It was making the rounds in her writers room.

It has a GIRLS vibe 

-- twentysomethings in Brooklyn looking for love and a secure rung on the ladder in the literary world, but from a male perspective.

And yet, it was the timeless quality of the characters' relationships that resonated with me.

I was immediately transported to my post college years in Manhattan

fumbling through the early stages of adulthood

in search of my adult self.

Behind The Closet Door

Over the years the back of the closet door in my office has

 become a repository for ephemera.

There's no rhyme or reason to what gets pinned to the cork,

but it's a eclectic collage of

the places of been,

the life I've lived.

Night Sky

92 Degrees and Sunny

The soul should always stand ajar,

ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

Emily Dickinson

The Drowning People

Rose

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
T. S. Eliot

Virtually Human

If you’re active on Twitter or Facebook, share photos through Instagram,

or blogging regularly, you’re already on your way to creating a Mindfile --

a digital database of your thoughts, memories, feelings, and opinions that is essentially a back-up copy of your mind.

 Soon, this Mindfile can be made conscious with special software,

 Mindware,

that mimics the way human brains organize information, create emotions and achieve self-awareness. This may sound like science-fiction, but the nascent technology already exists. 

The key to immortality is not preserving the body, but

downloading one's brain.

Martine Rothblatt examines the future of mindclones and the ethical issues that will arise.

I probably won't live to see this, but I believe it is not far off that we will exist after our bodies have died.

Mind blowing!!!!

Mrs. Kennedy and Me

JBK's secret service agent, Clint Hill, wrote a memoir about the years he spent by her side.

It's what he didn't write that interested me most.

On some level, he was in love with her.

 She was his life, and his own marriage and family suffered as he protected hers and her children.

Chilling to read his eye witness account of that fateful day in November in Dallas.  

He climbed onto the trunk of the car, as she rose from the back seat and crawled towards him.

His guilt and grief led to early retirement and alcoholism.

I only hope that telling his story has been cathartic.

God

I BELIEVE IN GOD,

ONLY I SPELL IT NATURE

Frank Lloyd Wright

86 Degrees and Sunny

Saturday.

Lunch from my favorite Korean stand at the farmers market.
Green ice tea from the hippie coffee shop.
Sipping, eating, reading

 a  book for work.

People watching,

eavesdropping fragments of conversations

about the weather, Friday night dates, sweet strawberries.
Navigating Saturday morning Silver Lake traffic.
Hipsters plus day tripping tourists

equal congestion.

At home, the little things that need tending to, add up.

Hours pass,

but I stop in time for a glorious afternoon hike

in the fading light.

The morning's farmers market purchases become dinner.

Down the hill, I'm blissfully entertained by

 Rachel Yamagata and Josh Radin

at The Fonda.

A perfect Saturday.

Upside Down

Try not to resist the changes that come your way.
Instead let life live through you.
And do not worry that your life is turning upside down.
How do you know that the side you are used to 
is better than the one to come?

~Rumi

Clouds

Enjoying the tranquility

of these storm-cloud days.

The Children Act

Ian McEwan's new novel doesn't come close to Saturday or Atonement,

but his prose and polemics are always engaging and thought provoking.

The Children Act was the perfect companion on a rainy weekend.

Gorgeous LA