Rites of Spring

"M'am?" It was a man's voice. The neatly dressed man I'd just passed. I figured he was going to ask me for directions. "Thank you for paying attention and not just walking by," he said. I'd just crossed the street from the Gold Line station at the edge of Little Tokyo. "We need your help," he went on, gesturing toward the woman a few feet away from him. I began to size them up, waiting for the pitch. They were out of gas, or had all their belongings stolen or had been stood up by a friend who was supposed to meet them and now they were stranded. These are the stories you hear when you talk to people on the street who say they need your help. "We each need $8.75 for train fare," the man said. "We spent our last dime getting to a shelter that doesn't have room for us. They're sending us on to this place," he said, pulling a card out of his shirt pocket. The card had an address on it and a phone number and a person's name. "My wife is pregnant," he went on, "and they're going to help us at this place, but we have to get there becaue the shelter we were at has used up all their transportation funds." I looked at the slight bulge beneath the woman's black cotton shirt. The couple were clean and articulate-- if a bit wild-eyed. 
Before heading off to my regular voluteer shift at the DWC, I'd stopped at the Bank of America and pulled out $40.00. I'd already broken one of the bills to buy my train ticket, so I had a bunch of one-dollar coins, which is what the ticket machines give you in change, and the remaining twenty. "I don't carry much cash," I said as unzipped my shoulder bag just wide enough to pull out my change pouch. "I have a bunch of coins and this twenty," I said, handing him the rumpled bill. A gold front tooth added some extra wattage to his smile.

The woman rushed forward and hugged me while I took a step back and locked one hand around the strap of my bag. After she let go of me the man opened his arms for his turn, but she grabbed him and pulled him back.
"Don't you dare," she said. "She's too pretty."  The man extended his hand then, and he and I shook hands.
"Good luck," I said, turning to go. A pretty young woman who'd obviouly just finished crying was in my path then, pulling a cigarette out of a pack. I could see she was was down to her last two, and her hands were shaking. "Please," she said. "Do any of you have a match?" The man rustled in his shirt pocket to help her. I went on my way.



Little Tokyo and Skid Row were infused with weird electricity today. People talking to themselves at the tops of their lungs. Two young couples with baby strollers walking their babies in circles in the big empty plaza in front of the Japan America center.  It was supposed to be quite chilly today, but the sun was hot if you were in a spot where it hit you directly. Maybe the manic energy was relief that yesterday's cold wind had gone away to chill the denizen's of some other city. Maybe the scent of springtime has a particular effect on Skid Row that I haven't learned about yet. Later in the day, the streets were full of cop cars when I walked out onto San Pedro St. after my shift. A helicopter was circling low like a malevolent dragonfly. When I went back across the plaza, two young guys were riding their bikes up and down the steps by the fountain, one the star of the show, the other with a camcorder filming his buddy's jerking leaps up the steps and the sailing down.



When I got off the train in my neighborhood there were three cop cars parked in front of the little bistro where I sometimes stop for a beer and a salad before walking the rest of the way home. Today's a great day to stop for a beer, I decided. Maybe people will be talking about what's going on. Phases of the moon, mercury in retrograde, solar flares, how the scent of jasmine can make people crazy. But no, if Los Angeles is in the grips of some temporary insanity, I guess I'll be the last to know. 


At least I've celebrated spring--paying proper homage to the goddess of fertility by giving twenty bucks to a woman in black who may or may not have been pregnant and in need.

Buy Local. Buy Handcrafted. Zero Emissions.

These beautiful and useful gifts are available in a "pop-up store" at Bloomingdale's and at the gift shop at the Skirball Center as part of the exhibit Women Hold Up Half the Sky. You can go to these lovely places and shop. Or you can go right to the source by taking the Gold Line train downtown to the Little Tokyo/Arts District station (where else can you see Buddist monks next to a Christmas tree?) have a stroll through the Little Tokyo Plaza, maybe have some lunch, and then angle toward San Pedro Street.

Between 4th and 5th is where you will find The Downtown Women's Center. You'll see a sandwich board on the sidewalk that reads, "MADE," the name of the boutique and coffee shop there. Push through those big historic doors. Marvel. Chat. Have some coffee. Oh--and shop.

Some of my favorite gifts: Handmade soap, decoupaged picture frames and mirrors, journals made from the covers of old recycled library books (the pages of these books are used for the decoupaged items,) hand knit scarves, little felt animals, candles in vintage tea cups and pretty glasses, earrings.

Some of the women you pass on the way in or out just might be the artisan who made the beautiful thing that caught your eye.

Joy to the world. Joy to your wallet and your soul.

Trees, Zombies, and Trancendence

It's a start. I spent something like three hours this morning cleaning up after the winds. I'll probably fill another four or five bags with leaves. The grevellia tree is the Halloween costumer of the tree world. When the wind blows it laces its dead brown fern-like leaves into all the other plants, making it seems as if they're half-dead. I released the camellias and the potted plants, the blueberry, and the hibiscus from their zombie shrouds this morning and swept up ankle-deep piles of grevalia leaves as well as leaves from trees that don't grow anywhere near my patio. My next door neighbor has a whole tree on his patio.

This evening after my shift at the DWC I went to a program at the Central Library, "Dark Carols: A Christmas Cycle." It was the world premiere of a series of songs/sung poems accompanied by piano.

Here is my favorite:

This tree would rather be outside,

asleep, and growing thirstily.

Of all the trees, why me?

Why is it I must die here, cozily? 

Dying slowly, drily, and exhibited so piteously,

hung with lights, 

I blaze with anger, pain, and electricity.

How I long to incandesce by accident into transcendence,

rocketing up to the cold starred heavens, with my 

murderers in attendance.

(lyrics byPhilip Littell)

I found this piece particularly dark and funny, as did most of the audience, it seemed, judging by their laughter.

For years my favorite Christmas attraction as been Altadena's Christmas Tree Lane. No dead trees there. Although I do believe at least one was lost in the windstorm.

I'm spending Christmas in St. Paul this year. I won't have a tree--live, dead, or artificial at my house. The streets of St. Paul will be full of un-murdered trees and transcendence.

The Clothes on Our Backs

I've been thinking about clothes. Dreaming about dresses, shirts, skirts and pants. Shoes with mates, and without. Boots, tall and short. Sandals, socks, scarves, shawls. All of these things were in my head when I woke at 3:30 this morning. When I was a waitress, I served Surf 'n Turf all night long. Now that I've been volunteering to sort donations at The Downtown Women's Center, mountains of clothing rise taller and taller until I open my eyes to verify that I am in my bed--and not about to be buried beneath an avalanche of clothes.

When sorting through the donations received by the DWC, it's easy to figure out, sometimes, that two or three Hefty bags have come from the same person. Did that person die, I wonder--or is this just the result of a closet-cleaning extravaganza--and is there twice as much that she's kept? I have a childhood memory of an old man on our front porch calling, "Rags, rags," but maybe it's a scene from a fairy tale. One thing I know for sure, there wasn't much wear left in anything by the time it was removed from its drawer or hanger. Things didn't go to Goodwill or any other charity. They went to a cousin if they had any life at all left in them, and if not, they were cut up for doll clothes or dust rags--or perhaps given to my possibly mythical rag man.

My daughter C. is a sailor. She works on historic tall ships, moving from boat to boat with no permanent address. She travels with a sea bag and often has only one hook and a drawer or two to stow her belongings while she is at sea. Her regular clothes live on dry land at my place. A half-dozen shirts, five skirts, five dresses, three jackets, three sweaters, a coat, a couple pairs of pants, and a surprising 15 pairs of shoes which may not include her steel-toed work boots. There are a few pieces of jewelry too, some scarves, a short stack of work clothes, and the accessories of her trade--knives and a marlin spike. A tool box. There's a second tool box of make-up and grooming products. Some bulky foul weather sailing gear. But I'd wager that, with her top-notch packing skills, everything mentioned above could fit into the trunk of her car.

My clothes would not fit into my car. My rule about clothes is that they have to fit in my closet--and I finagle that a bit. I have a modern double-sliding-door closet with an organizer system, not a closet like the one in the house I grew up in, which probably would have held a third of what I currently call my wardrobe. Isn't it weird that we have so much clothing in an era when, for most of us, washing them has become so simple? I have vague memories of my grandma or my aunt or someone doing the wash on an old hand-wringer machine. It would have been great to have some extra outfits in those days because washing them and hanging them on the line to dry required actual participation.

In 1973 I worked as an au pair in Paris. Monsieur was a doctor, and Madame was a med student. They and their darling seven-month-old daughter lived in a beautiful old building a couple of blocks from Parc Monceau. They had a nice car and a summer house on the beach in Montpelier. Their flat was comfortably furnished, but they had almost no clothes. Madame wore the same outfit to her classes nearly every day--red overalls in a thin velvet-soft fabric than she accessorized in a variety of ways. A navy t-shirt, a white man-tailored shirt, scarves, a little jacket. Monsieur had a couple of suits, a half-dozen shirts. His white t-shirts, worn as underwear shirts, were so much nicer than the Fruit of the Loom I was familiar with, that, I confess,  I pilfered one when I left my job to travel with friends. I wore it for a decade or more.

When did quantity win the fist fight with quality?

And if one would have the misfortune to be buried by an avalanche of clothes--from my own closet or elsewhere, it would be possible to dig out, right?

I Might Need a Makeover

I did a volunteer shift at the Downtown Women's Center today. Instead of sorting donations like I did Tuesday (Dear person who decided to own a pair of Earth Shoes in every color and then changed your mind about Earth Shoes, thank you,) I began training to work in "Made," the coffee shop/boutique. I'm learning how to use the cash register and make espresso drinks on a coffee machine that's only slightly smaller than a Smart Car. The idea behind this training is that, eventually, I will be able to train some of the women who are currently homeless in the DWC's job training program.
And if my worst case scenario arrives, I will have a marketable skill or two.
Or maybe someday, I'll have a little coffee place of my own: Beach Beans.

At the end of my shift, I was asked to deposit a large bag of trash in the dumpster behind the center. I wrangled the monster bag out the door and through the parking lot gate, noticing that the massive pedestrian gates were already closed and locked. Hmmm. That's right, I thought, I'll bet the day center is closed today for the all-staff meeting. Then I heard a slight whirring and a clunk. The parking lot gates. Yup. There I was, not looking my sharpest with a head of hat-hair after my café shift (yes, the job requires a hat, but it's not paper and looks stylish on most people,) toting a large black trash bag. The staff person who bolted out the door asked me very politely, and almost tenderly, if she could help me, but I'm pretty sure she thought I was homeless.

Note to self: dress for success, and carry a comb and some hair product.

Photo note: The pictures above and below are from"Made" the DWC boutique and coffee café.

As I begin to shape my weeks in a way that will include experiences other than staring at a blank word document and wishing I could or would write something, I have been doing a couple of different volunteer jobs. Today I sorted clothing donations at the DWC. A mountain of clothes. More clothes from Ann Taylor Loft than the inventory of an actual Ann Taylor Loft store. Things in such pristine condition that they may have actually been donated by the store. And if not, there's someone out there with a serious shopping addiction who just cleaned out her closet.

Los Angeles amazes me in this way. Such plenty. Such poverty. Three times a week, the women who patronize the DWC day center (these are the women who drop in for meals and showers and other care, but don't live there) get to "shop." The clothing, given the once over by volunteers like me in order to eliminate things too dirty or tattered, is sorted into piles of small, medium, large, and extra large before the women have at it. I haven't seen this in action yet, but today both residents and day center women chose Halloween costumes from the items we pulled from the giant pile and laid out on tables in the conference room. If you're downtown frequenting some of the meaner streets in the City of Angels, look for boas and flapper headdresses, for a genie, an airline stewardess, a church lady, a magician, a mannequin, a convict, and a doctor. Look for women who, once upon a time, probably had a place to call home just like you and me.

photo credit: dallas.about.com