Excuse me....hello...my name is Mother. Mother Nature. Can you help me? I'm lost. Confused.


On rainy days in Southern California people hunker down into their Uggs. They wear scarves and hats and polar fleece jackets under their rain gear. It's not at all out of the ordinary to see flannel pajama pants tucked into those Uggs because when you live in a poorly insulated stucco box, and you're faced with getting naked for a second while rain is pelting your sky lights and palm fronds are hurling themselves at your windows, you think, "Fuck it. These are pants and I'm going out in them."

It was still dark at 9:00 a.m. at my house. Rain wasn't exactly shooting bullets at my skylight, but it was loading the gun. Or so I thought. I wasn't about to give up my three-mile walk to and from the train and onward to the Downtown Women's Center--rain or no rain. I chose a long black overcoat, layered over a wool cardigan that was itself layered over a long-sleeve tunic. I slipped on my less stylish version of Uggs. Wrapped a velour scarf around my neck. For god's sake, I put a pair of rain pants in the plastic shopping bag that I also tucked my purse into to protect it. I stopped at the drug store and bought a new umbrella.  And I was sweating by the time I got to the corner. The few drops of rain that fell felt like bath water. Did someone move my house to an orchid farm in the tropics in the middle of the night and forget to tell me?

Last year it rained for eight straight days, and it was so cold in my living room that whenever I sat on my couch I hunkered under two blankets with the gas fireplace roaring and a brand new portable radiator at my feet. That's winter  in So Cal.

Something is happening here.

I pruned my roses finally just last weekend.  The blossoms from the flowering pear tree outside my window reminded me that it was spring. Except that it's winter.

This rose was too gorgeous to prune so I left it on an otherwise stripped rose bush.


Um...Hi.....Are you okay, M'am? You seem a bit lost. Call you Mother? Mother Nature? Okay.
What can I do to help you?

Beginning Anew...Again

You know you're not doing so well with the personal goals when you get an email from the goal-tracking website reminding you to update your chart. I've gotten two or three of those since my most recent personal foray into self-motivation. And I hate the stupid fancy pedometer I bought because its battery only lasts a day and it fucking talks to me when I turn it on. And wants to entice me with games. I hate games. Except when it won't turn on at all which is where things stand right now. So I'm going to send it back and see if I can get a more basic one off of a cereal box or something.

As for the goals, I'm not doing horribly at all of them. And some of it is so trivial, really. I'm exercising very consistently, and making fresh vegetable juice for myself every day, and drinking less wine--which is not exactly going to rock the world. I feel fabulous though, I must say, and if Madonna weren't trotting around on national TV promoting the idea that this is what a 53-year-old woman looks like, I'd probably feel even more fabulous.

But I went to the Chinese New Year celebration at the Huntington Gardens yesterday, so hey, it's the new year all over again. Fresh start, right?

I think my problem is that I am too often in the land of "Should." My bed is made, the laundry is done, the bills are paid, the litter box is scooped, the dishwasher unloaded, the patio swept, even the paint cans in the garage are alphabetized, and wow, look how late it is--there's no time to really dig in and revise that story now.

But it's the Year of the Dragon. This year could be different, right?

A Weekend of Substance, i.e. Meat

After reading THIS, despite the fact that it is not at all well-written, I decided to take a break from vegetarianism for an evening and seek out some grass-fed beef.  C., the man who loves me, and I went out to a place on the Sunset Strip called The Burger Lounge.

It was good. Really good.

There was more meat to come--at a reading for the launch of Issue 2 for The Rattling Wall held at the trés chic Hollywood Standard. Lots of opportunity for people watching as we waited for the show to begin. And support for C's theory that the hipness of a hotel bar is inversely proportionate to the light in the bathroom. All those pretty people are so dang fine that they don't need to check their eyeliner or their lipstick, I guess.

There was interesting signage--which made us wonder if pictograms ought to employ
punctuation.

  

There was a sort of real-life pictogram, too. Behind the check-in desk in the lobby, there was a large glass case with a gorgeous woman lying on a bed. As if to say, "Hey! This is a hotel! And we have beds! And maybe you could have a someone as attractive as this in your bed if you hang out in this neighborhood long enough!" It seemed too awkward to photograph her, so I didn't. You'll have to take my word for it that a hotel on the Sunset Strip would display a woman on a bed in a glass case.

But the real substance of this Hollywood night (held poolside with a view of The City of Angels spread out before us, of course!) was the reading. I was fascinated by the way the featured writers presented their work--prefacing it or not. Interjecting comments or barreling straight through their material in full-out performance mode. Reading from the magazine or choosing something else entirely.

This morning the man who loves me and I were still talking about Jon Sands's poems, how there really are those moments in life that change everything, how an artist's commitment to his material can be so profoundly moving.

What I've been doing lately instead of blogging...

...visiting botanical gardens, of course.

There's been high tea and photography with friends   at
The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens.











There's been a visit from writer and artist Thordis Niela Simonsen that not only included another trip to the Huntington, but the Los Angeles County Arboretum as well.

And the fabulous Greene and Greene masterpiece The Gamble House--which we were not allowed to photograph, but was full of images of birds and trees and flowers like the ones we were seeing.

When Niela saw the delphiniums at the Huntington, she thought of her grandmother's garden. I thought of the people in my life who are like the stakes that keep the delphiniums from toppling over.

And before these forays into urban nature, I drove 400 miles through the desert and back to visit my son and his family where there is a girl who loves horses.

There has been such beauty laid out before me.

photo credit for the botanical erotica at the top of the post: Sandy Walker
The rest of the photos are my own.