[So I get in the occasional mood where I think to ask for help would be to be weak. Wrong! I’m wrong. In truth, I was thinking, if I have to depend on someone, then I am dependent. What a crazy mindset to have I am now thinking. I need to learn how to identify a problem better so I can ask for the right kind of help.]
I had an awesome day yesterday. I learned a lot and I cleared my head. It didn’t hurt that the weather was a balmy 78 degrees with the sun’s reflections rippling across the city, pouring through various thickets of foliage and creating suspended, balanced geometries of shadow-play all over the city. All you had to do was go outside and you were thrust into the fury of its delight. I was down to see where it went, like questing for gold at the end of the rainbow. (I actually tried to do this when I was young, less for the gold, and more to go where I hadn’t been before. If this isn’t the allure of being young and much smaller-bodied — where the world beyond the neighborhood street you grew up on is completely and only known by the imagination — I don’t know what is.)
I found myself in Glendale and stepped onto Brand Avenue. I looked toward Downtown and the sparkling Angeles Crest mountains beyond in what became kind of a live painting of balanced elements between the hard edges of the buildings, the irregular edges of the rocky mountains beyond them and the wide open walkway of the avenue stretching out into both as they reflected the sun in a kaleidoscopic clarity. It was a sight/sleight of beauty.
I turned off the strip, honing in on a residential street that would eventually take me to my car. I found myself in a pocket of stillness. A brief moisture was in the air. The leaves gently fluttered as the city sounds dampened. I had a cup of warmed coffee in my hand and I was looking at Facebook on my phone, thinking of a certain someone momentarily, and noticed the odd lack of palm trees in Glendale.
I was driving back toward the freeway, the street was so congested that I made a U-turn and so headed out southbound. At this point, I wasn’t sure where I was going, but that was sort of the point. We don’t allow ourselves to get lost enough. When I got closer to Silverlake and Los Feliz, I phoned my bff since high school, Mike. Though he was out, I just continued on tracing Los Feliz Blvd as it undulated up and down beneath a tunnel of tree and mountain shade. I felt as if on this path, that instead of being carried by gas, that I was instead lifted by the fluttering breeze only to land upon Griffith Park where I turned in and parked facing down the street. Without thinking, I plopped down on a shady spot along the bank.
It was starting to become evening. My restlessness was getting the better of me though, and soon, I could be found exploring the hillside moving from Los Feliz to Hollywood to West Hollywood. I ended up at Regen Projects because I had stumbled into it while picking up my car from the tire shop. Unconsciously, I think I might be creating diversions in order to see more of the city and gain my footing in it. You know how you enter something new and now I guess it’s that I’m needing to see what all is there in order to make the best navigational choices. Also, I think it’s also to continually seek and find inspiration. We all need it to continue making the life we want, whatever that is. It gets too easy to not get out, and to get caught up in a routine or work. Let’s break the pattern! Let’s break the conditioning. Let’s just…live.
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