Dispatch From LA

writing love poems to dark leafy greens

quiet observations

 

~

 

happy birthday dad i love you.

Oh hi!  It's me.

With a little dispatch from the road.  

Motoring up the Ventura Highway with the music on high and the windows down.  Singing my head off.   Hand surfing out the window.

I stopped unexpectedly to stalk some migratory monarchs.  They're everywhere!  Migrating!

The kind that migrate are like SUPER bionic monarchs.  They live 8 whole months.  They have extra strong wings.  

Those facts courtesy of a sign I read in a Monarch park that I ran into while I was surveying and tracking.   Investigating.  Tiny orange birds fluttering through the blue sky.   Some hanging in clusters on the eucalyptus branches.

I waited around to see who this bike belonged to.  I was dying of curiosity.  I should have left a note attached to the flag that said, "You're awesome and so is your bike."

 In my mind I did.  Left the note, I mean.

I landed here.  My room was supposed to have a partial view with a side balcony.  Nope.  They upgraded me to the full ocean view in the FRONT.  The front !  The woman behind the counter must have looked at my wild eyes and crazy windblown hair and the big ollalaberry dressing stain on my shirt and decided I needed a room with a view.   Okay.  Thanks!

The ocean is roaring.  A tiny sliver of gold moon is lying on her back over the water.  I'm getting ready to hunker down with May Sarton's journal and see what she's up to over in Maine. 

Today is Papa Moss' 79th birthday.  He's been gone 11 years.  Also exactly 9 years to the day I drove up to Moss Cottage for the very first time.  It was dark, but I liked what I saw, so I called my realtor friend Lianne and said, "Get me into that house STAT!  I gotta see it!!!"

I'll never forget that night.  I was so prepared for disappointment,  but instead I found a nest to call my own.

the getaway car is packed

In between travel journal shots I'll share photos of where I'm headed this weekend.

Off for a couple of days seaside.  I love the wild central and northern California coastline.  I've missed it.

And I relish the long drive through autumn hills.

Looking forward to a good visit with a sweet friend.  We have a lot of catching up to do.

I want to putter alone down this beach and feel the cold ocean on my toes.  Sit down with my binoculars and look for seals and birds.

Walk in the dark along the wooden boardwalks.  Fall asleep listening to the wild surf.

All of that.

~

savoring the experience

  bottom left photo is the apartment courtyard of my homebase in budapest this summer.

while i'm away i focus on writing & collage in the journal.  some days i DO NOT feel like making the time for it.  but i do it anyway and am always glad i put in the effort.

i leave plenty of empty pages in between my daily recording and collaging.  sometimes the photos match the writing perfectly, other times they are way off.  

when i look back at the journal and flip through it a year from now it's the overall feeling i get from looking/reading it that matters most to me.  i forget about all the work it took to bring this travel journal to life.  very worth it if you ask me, but a plain written account of any trip is also very G O O D and shouldn't be discounted.

i so love the old letters and postcards i found at the esceri flea market.

how i would enjoy returning now in the fall when the weather is cool and pleasant.

"I feel happy to be keeping a journal again.  I have missed it, missed naming things as they appear, missed the half hour when i push all duties aside and savor the experience of being alive in this beautiful place.  One thing is certain, and i have always known it-the joys of my life have nothing to do with age.  They do not change.  Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting about..."

-At Seventy by May Sarton

more {pages}

it's officially official.  i am 100% finished with my travel journal.

and for your information, finishing has been extremely agreeable.  and so is this passage from At Seventy by May Sarton...

"It is a pleasure to be with someone who says that the eighties are her happiest years and who is silent while we drive around because she wants to concentrate on what she is seeing.  That is wonderful for me because I am the same kind of being.  I want to do one thing at a time and give it my whole attention."

...which i continue to enjoy on these warm autumn nights tucked away up here in my tiny cottage.

good saturday night from los angeles, to wherever in the big wide world you happen to be.

it's nearly friday

hello!  i photographed my entire travel journal this week.  i'll be posting the whole thing in the next week.  the full monty.   if i wasn't moonlighting by day as a monkey whisperer i might be more productive.  i might have wrapped things up by now.

but well...i haven't.

you're nice.  you don't care.  do you?

i'm reading 2 journals of may sarton.  one of her 70th year and the other, her 80th.  i love toggling back and forth between the 2.

nearly every day after school i come home to write in my journal on the back patio.   moments of solitude i need after a day crowded with jabbering little people.  

and then i immerse myself in reading the other journals.  there are so many good passages i've marked to share.  so many good words to swallow and digest.

"...but the real happiness yesterday had nothing to do with giving or buying anything but came from solitude, an unhurried day, the silence unbroken except fo the pheasant's cry.  even the ocean, silky blue and absolutely calm, was silent."

-At Seventy:  A Journal by May Sarton

The Bully Project

Anderson Cooper had a special report on bullying, did you see it?  So sad!  That program led me to this new documentary coming in March of 2012. Too bad being different means being endangered for so many kids.  I was especially heartbroken over the bullying of Alex Hopkins, the young man with asperger's syndrome who endures daily torture on the bus ride to and from school.   I hope his bullies know the eyes of the world are upon them.  Of course even a video camera on the bus didn't seem to deter them.  Hmmmm...maybe school busses need adult bully monitors.

After school on Friday I headed east into downtown.  Was feeling moody and contemplative.  Eager to begin the weekend.  Already looking for some small adventure in which to lose {or find} myself.   

 I drove through these streets and absorbed their peculiarities.  Gathered images.  Took note of which places to revisit. 

I parked on a quiet street east of downtown in the Arts District.  Warehouses, lofts, cold storage.  Wandered around with my camera.  Bliss.

hello praying mantis

click, then click again to see him up close and personal.  so cool!

a new friend has come to moss cottage.  he was perched on a chair on the back patio this morning.

  i keep going outside to look for him.  he stays in the same place for a loooong time so he is easy to find.    i've been talking to him in a cat voice.  i can't help it!   he is very personable and swivels his head when i come around.  his hearing and vision are supposed to be keen.  he climbed onto the honeysuckle vine shortly after I spotted him.

he is a lovely charming creature don't you think?  and so good for the garden, eating all the ne-er-do-well insects.

i read that in french culture he leads lost children home.  isn't that sweet?

cupcake eating weather

I left school yesterday and my internal compass pointed me towards Auntie Em's.

I thought about the bread pudding, whoopie pies, and other delicacies, but settled on the red velvet cupcake.

A cliche I know, but some cliches shouldn't be abandoned.  

This is the cupcake that has launched 1000 ships.  And this is the place to get it. 

And I do adore a cupcake that is half frosting and half cake.  True story.

 It's been 100 degrees the last couple of days. Cupcake eating weather!  Um...right?

Monday Night 63 Degrees

I'm 98% finished putting photos in my travel journal.  I somehow squeezed so many between the pages.  I'm looking forward to turning my attention towards my visual journal and a few other crafty ideas I've got brewing.  I wish I could multi-task, but alas I am unable.

Though when I close the pages of my Budapest travel journal I'll be satisfied knowing I'm COMPLETELY finished.  Done!  Finito!

Here:  I present one snowy cat on an autumn colored rug.

and here...  I present some little pics of the cozy abode that awaits me at 7500 feet elevation in the southern highlands of Mexico (!)  The scene of my next travel adventure which I'll be embarking on in about 9 weeks.  Coming with?

I've mentioned my fabulous and interesting friend DOROTHY before.  She lives in the coastal village of Cambria with her long-time companion & partner.  2 extraordinary women living by the seaside.  Dorothy has just started blogging again, on what I hope will be a more regular basis.  Myself and the rest of the world want to know what thoughts are tumbling around in that inquisitive colorful mind of hers.

stay hungry. stay foolish.

I bought my first computer in 1997.  It was used, a Macintosh.  About 5 years old.  I think I paid a few hundred bucks for it.  Over the years I upgraded many times, each time buying a used Mac.  Finally in 2005 or so I got my first brand new computer- the IMac.  Steve Job's Think Different campaign from the mid-90's was always my favorite.  I loved seeing the giant iconic billboards splashed all over LA.

I tracked down Steve Job's commencement speech he gave at Stanford.  When he died this past week, I wanted to read every word of it.  This is my favorite piece.  I put it in my journal for safekeeping.  Big thoughts from a beautiful mind...thinking different to the end.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

 

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

 

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

 

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

 

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

-Steve Jobs

1955-2011

 

drenched

 a rare storm on wednesday.  our first rain of the season.   

small rivers formed in the streets.  every surface became beaded with water droplets.

small glittering domes covered every leaf and petal.

i grabbed my macro lens 

and went outside.  i felt sort of giddy.

having a macro lens is like having a key that unlocks another universe that exists inside the one we already know.

only this one is shinier brighter NEWER.

you see everything for the first time.  you are an explorer sailing over the edge of the known universe.

into the unknown.  you want to lay down on each leaf.

  climb underneath each silver dome.  say hello again and again.  to everything you meet.

the day after monday

tomatoes + plums + mozzarella 

a final warm day before storm clouds gathered.

let's eat outside.

with a big glass of fizzy elderflower soda.  whadda ya say?

~

my cute friend judy wise is offering this online class:

i haven't taken it and i don't know a single solitary thing about hot wax.  except that i screamed once when someone tried to hot wax my upper lip.  big sad face.  since it's JUDY offering the class i'm sure it will be worth it's weight in gold.  just sayin'.

And finally, extra clever LIbby was inspired by FTB to make this big stack of books for holiday gifts. In a stroke of genius she whipped up her own covers out of cardboard & fabric to sandwich the book blocks between.  So cool!

Between now and Halloween, FULL TILT BOOGIE will be on sale.  After the witching hour on the 31st prices revert back to normal.

GO HERE for more info.

pretty

some pics from Heart & Home 

  there are so many online magazines now.  i thought this one from the uk was especially good.  looks really fab if you expand as big as you can.  there's an ipad version HERE.

i saw a small wallpaper covered canvas that got me excited.  among other things.  

as soon as I post this i'm heading straight to my art table to do something crafty.

and also...

i saw THIS and it made me want to draw something!

 

hey you.

we're just lounging around thinking BIG october thoughts under the blue dome of sky.

running errands in the neighborhood that happened to take me by here.

and here:

someone was in the exact same position when i returned.  maybe his tail was pointing right earlier, instead of left.  

i can't be sure.

2 more inspiring auditions that I watched 3 or 4 times each.  More X-factor love.  What can I say?