Wanna come over for a beer?

I fret about my lack of social life--or L.A.'s version of a social life anyway which usually requires one to get in a car and race down the freeway, planning around rush hour traffic whenever possible.  I'm spoiled by writer's residencies, I guess, and maybe my long-ago life in a small town where familiar faces are close by and eating dinner alone would be just plain weird. I do have friends in L.A. It's just that I seldom do what's required to see them. I'm not sure why.

But yesterday I actually had two social encounters: Lunch with two writer friends at a Silver Lake restaurant called Forage--which in my head I kept wanting to call Rampage, which is what I wanted to do when I saw the food. In a good way. All fresh and delicious and healthy with plenty of inventive veggie options. Goat cheese and date jam, with a crumble of hazelnuts and diced mint on toast. It's all in the garnish.
I should garnish more.

A little later it was Mythos beer and pistachios on my patio with a poet I met in Greece. Somehow it seems to me that all these fabulous women writers I know should be getting together more often and making our own mini-residencies where we write all day and get together for dinner. We should trade houses or apartments from time to time, too. Shake out our brains in different surroundings and see what ends up on the page.

It's a revealing encounter--getting together with friends you haven't seen in months. You have to get caught up, explain where you've been and what you've been up to, what you've written or what you're working on. I realized that  since the BIG DIVORCE NEWS  in July (that was practically a month ago,) I  haven't done much writing. I've been reading short things--poems, and New Yorker stories, and blog posts. My attention span is telling me that it spent four years spinning through nastiness and absurdity. It doesn't want sustained anything now.

And I want to be outside on my little citified patio. Who's going to win--me or the white fly? Will the blueberries get off their twiggy little butts and bear some fruit? Is it the same damn squirrel who keeps stalking my apricot tree. Or is it a hybrid squirrel-rat (squat--you pronounce that with an A like in apple,) and can a squirrel really breed with a rat and is the neighborhood overrun with these skinny-tailed beasts? Do I have room for another flowering plant--or should I see if I can get some tomatoes going this late. What about an olallieberry? This is what I've been thinking about.

But I did realize while talking to my friends, that though my brain is in neutral, my life seems garnished with spoonfuls of sweetness these days.