mom

Daily drawing

Some days, a sheet of stickers is all I've got in me. I'll scratch around a little more before bed.

Winter Sunset

Wheeee!

This is what I write here when I
don't
have
time
this is what I am when I am
in
and
out
Coming in from somewhere, and
I gotta go to somewhere, and
I'm having so much fun that I just
run
a
bout.

This trip has been so, so much about connecting with old friends and finding out that they have grown and found some peace with themselves. Is this the business of our thirties? I'm hearing it over and over from my peers I haven't seen in five years. It's making me happy and inspired. The pace of this LA jaunt is unrelenting but I'm seeing a side of LA that I've never seen and starting to understand why some people love this city. I have a lot to process. I miss my kiddo! But I'm so glad I'm here.

Now, off to see some rock music at the Roxy!
XOXO
A

When did I get so jaded

Another packed LA day and I am stockpiling inspiration. An old friend took me to her favorite LA lookout point and I found myself at the top of Hollywood Hills, a little wary of the drunk kids and the suspicious rich people who live up there and also the coyotes we saw on the way up. Nervous about walking the last bit of one-lane road around a blind curve on the side of a cliff with no sidewalk, but she was so calm about it so I went along. There were a hundred poems to be written today but no time to write them or even finish the one I started yesterday so here's just one thought. I have a creative backlog now, whee!

Another ridiculous vista in LA

Moon dead overhead

City crouching below

300 degrees of space

At the top of Hollywood Hills

Some young dude leading

his girlfriend up the last hill blindfolded

“you better not be

about to throw me off a cliff”

“no honey, I swear I’m not”

That proposal isn’t going to

go over well.

Liberty Bell progress

Lazy Commute Day

Water color colored pencils

Hand and shapes, this morning while I drank tea. Accidentally dunked my paint brush into the tea cup instead of the water cup, so had to make some more tea!

Gap

Work in progress

I had a beautiful walk tonight with Claytie up Echo Mountain in Alta Dena, and I was overwhelmed on that walk with a monster of a poem that is in rough draft form and over three pages long right now. It's not done and I'm going to work on it some more tomorrow, but here is an excerpt to prove I really am working on something for the day.

* * *

The sun going down too fast, careless, sloshed

pink and orange toward us, all over the sky.

I wanted to see it from the top, where I could look the other way and see the simultaneously rising

moon,

wanted to run but paralyzed

by the paint-dripping clouds

soft and blurry overhead,

sharp in the distance,

fog or smog reddening the distant city’s cheeks

so that I thought it looked

like it might cry.

It’s okay, I wanted to say,

it’s only spilled paint

the stars will clean it up

I wanted to run up the mountain, worried about missing the climax

I wanted to stop and take in the sun from each lookout point on the way

I settled for a brisk walk up, pausing when the beauty made me pause,

knowing that each moment I enjoyed from the mountainside

was costing me a moment bathed in light at the top.

knowing the show that was so overwhelming right here

would be even better somewhere else.