Dispatch From LA

Bright Beads Of Rain

Bright beads of rain sprinkled down yesterday morning, covering the leaves with fat silver droplets.

Each globe of water - a little world spinning in its own galaxy.

Some of the drops teeter towards the edge of the leaf, but hold fast.

A special gravitational force field keeping them suspended.

Completely wonderous this world of water. All the living things in the garden swallowing every last drop. Here the Pride of Madeira continues her purple show.

One stalk competes for attention in its own way.

Buck ventured out, but no further than the porch.

Wyatt has no use for rain and stayed inside.

Here below is the picture I didn't take of the youngest member of the cat posse, strolling inside soaking wet after being out all morning. Walking, not running through the cat door, smelling of grass and spring. Trailing water, and dirt, and leaves across the kitchen floor. Ignoring my cries of protest when she jumped on the couch and shook herself off like a big dog. Jumping off again when I approached with a towel. All that water clinging to the top layer of her long fur.

Have you been HERE ? If you enjoy writing and words you'll want to go this minute.

The Bluest Shade Of Purple

Using some spraypaint experiments done on heavy watercolor paper, I fashioned a pouch to hold journaling supplies and collage fodder I collect during the day while in Italy. This will go in my bag so I can write while exploring. Plenty of duct tape add strength and flexibility. When I get back from the day's adventures I'll reinsert the pages I've written into my travel log.

Another envelope for saved and found scrap materials. Receipts, bus tickets, and interesting street trash. My eye is constantly scanning the sidewalks honing in on stray notes, numbers, lists.

When I wrap up Visual Journal #9 I plan to dust off the container of little boxy canvases that have been sitting in the garage for the last few months. Without the journal to distract me I'm hoping to collage & stencil my way through the entire container. This is unlikely to happen in reality, but in my mind every one of the canvases is already finished.

LA is cooling back down. 59 degrees with 72% humidity right now. Rain is on the way. I hope the garden gets one last drenching before the long dry spell begins.

The Pride of Madeira offers up her tiny blossoms one by one, until the entire stalk is saturated with the bluest shade of purple.

A small bite of Mary Oliver to tide you over:

from the time of snow-melt,
when the creek roared
and the mud slid
and the seeds cracked,

I listened to the earth-talk,
the root-wrangle,
the arguments of energy,
the dreams lying

just under the surface,
then rising,
becoming
at the last moment

flaring and luminous
the patient parable
of every spring and hillside
year after difficult year.

Bedtime Stories

Early spring in Los Angeles. The night air is luscious. Less fragrant now that the days are heating up more and the blossoms from my mystery trees are nearly spent, but sweet all the same. The current temperature is an even 60 degrees. The low will be 54 overnight. That means heaters are OFF and windows open for nighttime dreaming. Perfect. And if you wanted you could leave your house late at night in a cotton nightgown and putter down the street in your big ugly Reeboks. If you wanted. You could.

Mailart touchdown in London. On a Sunday no less.

I'll be entering a child-free zone on next Tuesday for 6 weeks. More time for mailart then. And silence.

I'm unbridling all the baby horses and stepping out of the way. This horse wrangler is ready for some solitude.

A blaze of red geraniums in the front window boxes.

You may recall the POLICE STING that took place in my back patio in October. The man who came tumbling down the bluff in back and crashed into my Joseph's Coat. Remember? Joseph is fine. I dunno what became of the other fellow.

Bedtime stories of late consist of brief biographical essays on my girl, LA. Savory reading for someone such as myself who is smitten with Los Angeles in all her light and shadow.

I love BRUTUS the sheep. In fact I love every single word this man writes on this, one of my favorite blogs in the universe. The farm animals, barn cats, hospice dogs, every single last word and photo I DIG.

10:34 p.m. 65 Degrees

Oh dear. A trip to Scrapbook Oasis in Irvine. A few more things got added to the travel book. Like larger rings.

A few green chandeliers courtesy of Hambly screenprint overlays.

The variety of scrapbook paper is staggering. Many bad words were uttered under my breath. Each paper more fabulous than the next. I may have let out a few high pitched shrieks.

I tried to resist the little calendar, but alas, I could not. Cute stacks of cuteness everywhere I looked. It was overwhelming.
Meanwhile, new geraniums unfold in the bathtub out back.

The bird whisperer is up to his usual high jinx. In his soft warm jaws he's carried 2 large birds, 1 BIG lizard, an orange & black snake, and a tiny baby squirrel in the house in the last week. I tried to convey to him the depths of my despair upon seeing the stunned and frightened little creatures, but he plugged his ears with his paws. The Moss Cottage catch and release program is in full swing.
Note to self: If the lizard you are taking outside bites you DO NOT scream obscenities and drop it. A. the bite doesn't hurt at all B. you will have to crawl back under the chest of drawers to get him again. This will be v.v. annoying. Especially if he climbs up the back of the dresser, slips in through the crack in back, and slithers through your underpants.
I felt sorriest for the poor baby squirrel D.O.A. I'd never seen one before. It was very interesting to examine close up. Wyatt remains on house arrest until his fine retrieving instincts lessen.

Nasturtiums from Tyn's garden.

Look. Wisteria has been draped all across the city.

Perfume Factories

If you lived in Los Angeles you would want to go walking under the moonlight and breathe in the heady night air. The fragrance at night and early morning in the northern part of the city is sweet and strong. If you lived here you would want to open a window and let the scent inside. And like me, you would want to know the name of the trees that turn into perfume factories here in the late winter. For nearly 20 years their name has eluded me. I admire their secrecy. Information these days is sometimes too easily captured.

The travel journal is being built from the ground up.

Envelopes are being made.

Small pockets and tucked-in pages. Security envelopes have their role and fill it well.

And this farmhouse couple from South Dakota have agreed to accompany me on my journey to the Mediterranean. They've never been and always wanted to go. I'm pleased to take them.

What would a post be lately without a flower to light the way? Geranium. Good, stalwart friend of the garden.

Ideas Blossomed in My Brain Stem

Ideas blossomed in my brain stem and spread upward. Swirling through dense jungly undergrowth. Walking through Tyn's house on Saturday really got the creative engine roaring. I wanted to scatter black inky writing on top of the photos I took. Especially the ones with lots of white backgrounds. I printed out some 8 by 10's and glued them into my journal. One photo of an iron sacred heart high up on a creamy wall got turned into my banner.

Oh the big book, it is a growin'! Visual Journal #9 is enormous. If I leave it too long in one place it begins to send down roots. In 7 pages it will be finished. I think I'll plant it in the yard and see what happens.

That's the way it goes. One idea vining out into the next. I was going to buy a travel journal, but decided to use a stack of vintage frames instead.

Cut up file folders to use as pages to write on. Insert. Cut up more stuff and stick inside. Keep adding until travel journal is uncomfortably cumbersome and heavy. Put all thoughts out of your mind of how this will fit in your lunchbox-sized suitcase. Utter nonsense. All that is important is that the idea is spinning drunkenly out of control. Where it lands nobody knows.

Here. See. This brazen flower winked at me on my way to school this morning.

Our House Had A Heart And A Soul

Our house had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with;

and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies;

it was of us, and we were in its confidence,

and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction.

We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome

and we could not enter it unmoved.

TYN invited me over today on this most beautiful of blustery Saturday afternoons. Like I, she lives in a house built in the '20's. It is my favorite kind of house. Ramshackle, spilling over with worn beauty and frayed edges.

It is a house with a warm BIG presence. Nooks and crannies begging to be seen. Stunning views the eyes can't fully absorb. Color on top of color. Light on top of shadow. This house has it ALL. While I walked around with my gracious hosts and my camera, the Mark Twain piece above kept reading itself aloud in mind.

And I listened.

I couldn't help but be distracted by the visual poetry of this house. Later while strolling the grounds, hawks flew overhead. Clouds blew past. Tiny white blossoms rained down from the trees.

Tyn picked me this dear bouquet of narsturtium, sweet peas, sunflowers, geraniums, and wildflowers while we walked. They sit above me here on my desk and fill the room with fragrance.

A parting shot.

Thanks Tyn & Harry for letting me and my camera run wild.

Something Slid Beneath Me

Moment of Inertia

It's what makes the pancake hold still
while you slip the spatula under it
so fast it doesn't move, my father said
standing by the stove.

All motion stopped when he died.
With his last breath the earth
lurched to a halt and hung still on its axis,
the atoms in the air
coming to rest within their molecules,
and in that moment
something slid beneath me
so fast I couldn't move.

"Moment of Inertia" by Debra Spencer from Pomegranate

My sister sent me an email:

When I read this poem today I had vivid memories of making pancakes with dad and him saying "only flip them once - when you see bubbles that's the time to flip them, but only once" that was his steak cooking theory too. be patient and only flip once.

I myself have ruined way more pancakes than I've flipped properly or prettily. I did not inherit Papa Moss' patience gene, but the poem is lovely. Perfect.

Today after lunch my brood and I were lined up at the door to come in. I was giving my We-Are-Not-In-A- Circus speech, when one of the kiddos let out a high pitched squeal and pointed up into the sky.

"A BAG!"
ACKK
eek
more shrieks
I may have screamed. I don't recall.

We all stared up at the black plastic bag filled with air, pirouetting 200 feet over our heads. It spun over our bungalow, then caught an updraft and soared even higher. Every one of us stood there transfixed. Craning our necks in unison. After a few minutes the bag drifted down.

oh no!
gasps of dismay
mouths shaped like O's
NO!

Down the bag came on the street side of the fence. Back to earth where it started. There was a collective sigh. We tromped inside.
The feeling as we watched that old bag carried on the wind: pure delicious wonder.

Nothing I've written so far has anything to do with the accompanying photos. That's just the way I roll some days.
I did want to mention the lack of writing on my visual journal pages lately. I'm still writing I just do it afterwards. It's a solution that has brought me home to my book. I have to keep some parts for myself. The tiny spread up top are the finished pages.

Wyatt dreaming deep on the couch. His classic cape-on flying dream pose. Good boy.

And on my kitchen window sill, freesia, which fill that room with the smell of yellow. Divine.

The Radiant Center

The garden tending continues. Bit by bit I'm making headway through the tangled den of plants. The winter's rain was very good to the purple crest aeonium. It's hard to look away from that radiant center.

The pride of madeira is sending up its baby stalks. These will become foot-long spikes of blue. More evidence of drenching rain. Without the deep natural watering many things stay dormant and don't bloom, or even grow much. Not this year. This year we were soaked.

A golden day, a pile of books, an old chaise, loud buzzing overhead of hummingbirds flitting through the air, dozing cats, drowsy humans.

Blissed out on spring.

Coming inside occasionally to work on a fresh batch of mailart.

Spent too much time playing around with the banner. Made two completely different ones, then decided the spontaneous photo of the art table was the better choice after all.

In between all the leisure activities I found time for a movie. Things We Lost In The Fire. Benicio Del Toro was riveting. I'm giving it 10 popcorn boxes. Last week Away From Her with Julie Christy had me under its spell. Both films will require kleenex. I do love a good heartbreaker.

Promise me you'll go look at this equine fabulousness NOW . You can thank me later.

Been to see DJ in a while? I love all the stitching she's been up to.

All The Locks Click Open

Dreams

All night
the dark buds of dreams
open
richly.

In the center
of every petal
is a letter,
and you imagine

if you could only remember
and string them all together
they would spell the answer.
It is a long night,

and not an easy one--
you have so many branches,
and there are diversions--
birds that come and go,

the black fox that lies down
to sleep beneath you,
the moon staring
with her bone-white eye.

Finally you have spent
all the energy you can
and you drag from the ground
the muddy skirt of your roots

and leap awake
with two or three syllables
like water in your mouth
and a sense

of loss--a memory
not yet of a word,
certainly not yet the answer--
only how it feels

when deep in the tree
all the locks click open,
and the fire surges through the wood,
and the blossoms blossom.

by Mary Oliver from Dreamwork

Got Blue?

Griffith Park Observatory. Nestled in the Hollywood Hills. Creamy white stucco against a backdrop of blue & green.

Am I in Los Angeles or Greece?

Oh. There's the Hollywood sign. Must be LA.

A little like walking onto a movie set. It's that beautiful.

I'll return soon at night to put my eye to the original 12-inch Zeiss refracting telescope located on the roof. More people have looked though it than any other telescope in the world. I'm always up for a good celestial show.
May I present my new summer sandals. Perfect for padding around the roomy villa in Praiano. Blue to match the color of sea and sky.

I like to imagine sitting on the terrace 40 days or so from now. Sipping some limoncello. Watching the fishing boats drift by. Strolling through the streets. Keeping my sister out of bar fights. It's nice to have a big blue dream looming on the horizon. Yes indeed.

Let me share a few places worthy of an extended visit. Blue shoes optional.

I've taken you here before, but it's worth a return trip. GO NOW

Craving these smart collages. Go see. DOLL FACE

A new blog find. Words, thread, cloth. Utterly fresh and delicious. NOVEMBER MOON

That's My Dream And I'm Sticking To It

The visual journal has made its way up to the surface of the art brain. I reluctantly opened her up this afternoon and was pleasantly surprised to be lulled into a sense of wonder at pasting together images gathered on a field trip with the kiddos on Friday.

Imagine opening drawers and finding eggs the size of thimbles. Bird specimens collected in the 19th century. I could have stayed in the bird room all day, but alas sticky hands pulled me towards other curiosities on display at The Natural History Museum.

I will return alone very soon to spend more time with the birds.

There were enormous dioramas of animals from every continent.

But perhaps most interesting of all was the bus ride to and from Exposition Park. On a spring day the city is bursting with life. 20 foot long men are reclining on 7th Street.

Dr. Seuss murals are going up on Figueroa.

Everyone wants to borrow the teacher's camera and make a picture of their own.

And while everyone takes their own photos I fantasize that Nikon or Sony donates point and shoot cameras to my whole class and Apple gives us all Macbooks and MTA lends us a bus for the year and we lock up the classroom and hit the road.

That's my dream and I'm sticking to it.