Top ten things about visiting my oldest darling friend,

10. Sitting out on her beautiful leafy patio, morning noon and evening.

9. Eating toast made of cinnamon bread from Trader Joe's every morning for breakfast.

8. Watching the Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock Holmes series.

7. Shopping with someone who knows you well enough to tell you to buy the bracelet, buy the scarf, both on sale and both precisely up your alley.

6. Talking about teaching in a way that's both reflective and regenerative.

5. Eating a dinner at Barn Diva in Healdsburg that includes a Meyer lemon tart with huckleberry topping and a dollop of creme fraiche ice cream that shows you what creme fraiche is for.

4. Driving all over the Sonoma county landscape.

3. Talking morning noon and night.

2. Peonies by your bedside.

 

1. Friend who has known you since you were fifteen years old, knows you maybe better than you know yourself. (happy birthday on the right day! [this year, at least])

 

 

 

Word from Cali.

We began the morning at leisure, in what is perhaps my favorite garden patio of all time.

in the Adirondack chair

nasturtium & leaf

ball of leaves & light



Then, we went into the city to the DeYoung museum, for an exhibit of Jean Paul Gaultier couture. It was spuhlendid.

how you do zat?, Jacques Lacan deconstruction mix

headdress



Then, we drove to the Cliff House, the ruins of the Sutro Baths, and Land's End:

Now that was a pretty good day.

New thing.

My new camera arrived today. It is excellent:

Among its clever tricks: it can take high speed burst pictures. Tonight, I took a series of high speed pictures of singing son eating that are so hilarious I don't know what to do with myself, or these pictures. They would make an awesome flipbook. Perhaps I will get on that right away. Okay, you've talked me into it. Note: this flipbook will be available for only a limited time. [UPDATE: flipbook availability now over. Woe.]

In other news: after aiding college daughter by taking her car to get it inspected whilst she was laboring away at managing sandwich artists, I came home, let Final Cut Express teach me important life lessons, did the laundry, cooked some elegant and delightful white beans for dinner, read a story by Jonathan Franzen, and packed stuff for a trip to Sonoma County, where my oldest darling friend lives. Me and my camera are going to have a great time on our visit.

Some more desert.

When we're out and about in foreign environs, such as the desert almost directly south of Barstow, we like to pick up all the free ephemera floating around in the racks at the Seven-Eleven, or in this case, at the Stater Bros. grocery store in Twenty-Nine Palms (this might be the all-time greatest name for a town in the history of the universe, and I am including Constantinople and Timbuktu).

In this little rag, we found an article about a brand new book that was having its brand new book party that very weekend. The book is called Jackrabbit Homestead, which is all about the little homesteads that sprang up in the Morongo Basin near Twenty-Nine Palms as a result of the federal government's (hows you spell that, son? I said: g-u-v-m-i-n-t. God Bless America.) Small Tract Act of 1938.

Turns out that our little piece of heaven in the desert is right there in the middle (or on the verge, anyway), of the remains of these homesteads, which are basically mostly abandoned shacks. Some of them are being reclaimed by all sorts--artists included.

Shack architecture, is what we started calling it:

tags: shack

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Translation: go on a trip, come back to your actual life. With a job and all.

Question: was it a "trip," aka a vacation? or was it a "project"? And all that that entails.

Question: will I ever organize my photos?

For now:

. . . and we're back.

We pulled into our driveway at about 9:15 p.m., making our trip from the coast to the mountains in about 10 hours and 45 minutes. Not bad. I'll be posting pictures and commentary from the trip over the next few days. I know, you can't wait.

Let me just say that, in L.A., the weather was perfect, we didn't get lost in Compton, I learned ever more fascinating facts about the geography and history of Los Angeles and environs, and also this, the people: from St. George to Nephi, roughly from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m., as beautiful, clear light shone across the faces of the bluffs and cliffs and mountains and into the hollows of the valleys, I thought, oh my God, so beautiful. Over and over and over again.

Los Angeles: the report.

Part 1.

We left at a ridiculous hour, because I didn't want us to spend part of one of our days traveling, and true to that desire, we arrived at LAX at about 8:30 a.m., got our car--a stylish Suzuki something or other, black--and drove confidently down Sepulveda to Hermosa Beach, where we got a burrito at Java Man and then went to the beach.

Exhausted and exhilarated. I loved this beach because it seemed to me, in the seventies, that it was countercultural in a way that the two beaches closer to me, Torrance and Redondo, were not. I probably went there like three times, but it is utterly vivid to me. Its symbolic value is somehow huge. Some of what I loved about it has changed, but not all.

You can see the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where I went to high school, in the distance. To the north, Manhattan Beach, El Segundo (where my dad worked), then LAX and parts north (more about this later). I know: those of you who grew up there, you know this. Those of you who live there, you know this. But I lived there for four years, and made only the sketchiest mental map of the place--the place broadly construed, the Greater Los Angeles area. I think of each trip as penciling in a few more details.

We came back down to this beach each day at one point or another, in our little meterological, demographic, naturalistic and oceanographic studies. We learned a lot:

At the butt-crack of dawn.

Going to see my best friend since forever in Santa Barbara. This is Santa Barbara redux, since the trip the historian and I took last February was sort of mixed--too short a time for such a long trip, mainly. Today, I finished about 97%--maybe even 98%--of the writing-for-hire project that has been the monkey on my back that has been simultaneously kicking my ass and also reminding me how very, very undisciplined I am.

However, despite my substantial character flaws, I'm going to see my best friend since forever in Santa Barbara! She knows the town and there's an actual agenda that seems guaranteed to produce a good time. There's a beach, for one thing. Good restaurants (the historian and I had a great dinner when we were there--mine was a plate of deconstructed fish tacos that looked like a fiesta and tasted sublime). A beautiful old library and movie theater.

Well, see you when I get back, suckers. I'm going to Cali. I will give you a full report and possibly I will mobile blog. We'll just have to see.