Tuesday, March 31, 2015

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






Monday, March 30, 2015

Hollywood Reservoir



Saturday, March 28, 2015

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.”

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

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.





Monday, March 23, 2015

Interiors








Sunday, March 22, 2015

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.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Magic Hour


Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

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.


Monday, March 16, 2015

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.







Sunday, March 15, 2015

Night Sky


Friday, March 13, 2015

92 Degrees and Sunny

The soul should always stand ajar,
ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

Emily Dickinson


Thursday, March 12, 2015

The Drowning People


Wednesday, March 11, 2015

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


Tuesday, March 10, 2015

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!!!!



Monday, March 9, 2015

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.




Sunday, March 8, 2015

God

I BELIEVE IN GOD,
ONLY I SPELL IT NATURE

Frank Lloyd Wright



Saturday, March 7, 2015

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.

Friday, March 6, 2015

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

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Clouds

Enjoying the tranquility
of these storm-cloud days.


Monday, March 2, 2015

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.




Sunday, March 1, 2015

Gorgeous LA