Thompson Street, SoHo, February 2007

OK, enough of the Golden West. We're back in New York City now, back to "real life." I'm happy to report that while I was away in California, spring seems to have sprung in New York. The bulbs are coming up and the daffodils in front of our building are starting to bloom. On Wednesday, I cleared away all the pine boughs that cover our garden in the winter, revealing more naked little daffodil shoots emerging from the ground.

I thought I'd better use these photos, since they include snow and in a few weeks they'll look really weird. This long poem, for lack of a better word, is neatly written across a long wall on a basketball court. Here's what it says: “A true holy war the streets are, to claim your pain, a voice in winds, where the women and mother nature are the muse bleed mom bleed and die with honor -- Rambo"

Now, I hate to be a poetry critic, but this seems a little like stringing together unconnected phrases and expecting some meaning to emerge. It brings to mind those collections of magnetic words that you can use to compose a poem on your refrigerator door. In fact, maybe that's what Rambo did, and then he just transferred the outcome to this wall.


I like the graphic effect, though, of the words running down the long wall. Rambo is a graffiti artist whose tags appear frequently. In fact, you may remember this one.

I watched "Borat" last night - my God, what a cringe-inducing movie! Funny in places, laugh-out-loud funny, but also really horrible. I suppose there's some value in pointing out our American stereotyping and prejudices, but I've always really hated practical jokes, and I feel terrible for the people on the receiving end of these stunts. Yikes. It makes me wince even now.

Pinkberry

For once, I was trendy.

While in West Hollywood, I got to visit Pinkberry. For those of you who are not trendy, Pinkberry is “the” place to go for frozen yogurt.

It got written up recently in The New York Times and in fact has spread to the Big Apple, as well as other locations in L.A. But it got its start on a side street off Santa Monica Boulevard, which is where my friend Jerry took me on Saturday afternoon.

Pinkberry offers two kinds of yogurt - plain and green tea - with an assortment of toppings like strawberries and kiwi and Cocoa Pebbles cereal. There's also a sweet rice topping called mochi that you have to know about to ask for (it’s not on display like the others).

Jerry and I got our yogurts, mine a $4.95 medium green tea with strawberries, blackberries and the mysterious mochi. As we sat in the tiny restaurant, I noticed the afternoon sun casting long, dramatic shadows across the floors and colorful stools. I got out the camera and took a few shots.


And then, a slim redheaded teenager who looked like Opie on "The Andy Griffith Show," and whom I shall call the Pinkberry Bouncer, came over and said, “Photos are not allowed in the restaurant.” So I put my camera away, my feeling of trendiness somewhat punctured.

Christopher, Jerry and I debated this rule later. Maybe it has something to do with competition - maybe they don’t want people taking photos of the menu, or the presentation of the yogurt. But I was taking pictures of the chairs. As I said to Christopher, “Are they afraid someone else might open a restaurant with colorful plastic furniture?”

Well, anyway, the photos turned out nice. And the yogurt was good, though I’d be just as happy with some Haagen-Dazs sorbet. I guess deep down I’m just not very trendy.

Simple gifts

On my flight out to California last week, I finished a book called “Simple Gifts: Lessons in Living from a Shaker Village,” by June Sprigg. It was about a summer Sprigg spent as a teenager living among a group of elderly Shaker women in New England in 1972.

By that time, nearly all the Shakers had died out. They believed in celibacy and relied on conversions to replenish their ranks, and while that worked well in 1820, it had doomed the order to extinction by the 1970s. Still, the women who mentored Sprigg were gently wise and focused on daily tasks of devotion, cooking and sewing and maintaining a small museum and gift shop at their once-thriving Shaker settlement. Sprigg wove into the book the quiet atmosphere of the village, from the exquisitely simple furniture to the beauty in its 100-plus-year-old sugar maples and solid, wood-framed, hand-built structures.


Then, on Saturday, I went with my friend Jerry to see “Into Great Silence,” a movie that beautifully depicts the lives of monks in a Carthusian monastery in France. Because they live in silence, the three-hour movie has virtually no dialogue. Everything is conveyed in footage of the monks living their daily existence, repairing a shoe or eating or praying at the altar in their austere living quarters. In between, there’s footage of the landscape of the French alps, changing with the seasons, from snow to grass and back to snow again.

The book and movie together made me think about commonality in religions. Many different religious paths encourage humility, advocate a non-material or even anti-material life, and thrive on the cues of the seasons and the ever-changing natural world. Zen is certainly similar, placing nearly all its value in silent practice.

I thought about this common ground, about the things we yearn for as humans, regardless of the structure of our beliefs. I suppose the underlying message is to not get caught up in ourselves and our everyday human problems. Think of others. Remember what's bigger than we are. Remember to notice life, to enjoy it.


After the movie, Jerry wondered why anyone would want to become a monk. Obviously, I'm not one, so I can't entirely explain it. But I understand the need to step back, simplify, pay careful attention and tune out the distractions - money, ambition, acquisition, sex.

I can see how a Shaker woman might find joy in sewing a handmade pincushion, or how a monk's careful penmanship is an expression of faith. I understand the need to connect with nature, whether the alpine forests of France or the sugar maples of Maine. And I think it's so interesting that such diverse traditions ultimately have the same lessons at their core.

Hollywood Boulevard

I went running early on Sunday morning, before the L.A. roadways had a chance to choke up with their customary traffic, and it was great to get out and do some sightseeing while getting some exercise. I ran from West Hollywood to the old Capitol Records Building, that landmark round tower near Hollywood and Vine, in the seedy heart of Hollywood itself.

Part of my trek took me up Hollywood Boulevard, the site of the Stars Walk of Fame, or whatever it's called. As I ran I tried to keep an eye on the stars and see who was honored there. A lot of them are totally predictable, like Fay and Jack here, as well as everyone from Lana Turner to Robert Cummings. Lots of old Hollywood.


But here and there are a few surprises. Lindsay Wagner was great as "The Bionic Woman," but I didn't really expect her to have a star. And Terry Bradshaw? Mary Hart?

I'm told that getting a star is not as simple as being chosen. Apparently there's also a fee, maybe for installation costs. I'm guessing if you're famous enough you can get a star without putting down any dough, but that's pure conjecture on my part.

And in case any of you doubt the Christian fundamentalists who say Hollywood is evil, look who else has a star:


(To be fair, God had one too.)

Now I'm back in New York, having taken the red-eye. I'm picking up my cat from the vet and then it's off to a day of work, which I hope I'll be able to manage without being too spacey with fatigue! (By the way, I've added some photos to my two previous California posts...enjoy!)

Visiting Marilyn

Today we made a pilgrimage to Westwood Memorial Gardens, a tiny cemetery entirely hidden in the interior of a block of tall office towers and commercial buildings. You'd never know it was there unless you searched for it.

The goal: Marilyn Monroe.

I thought visiting Marilyn would be an interesting Hollywood outing. Maybe an unusual choice, given that I was born several years after Marilyn died. For me, she's never been anything but dead. But she's such a legend, and I've seen lots of her films, so of all the possibilities, she's the dead star to whom I most wanted to pay my respects.

Turns out that finding the cemetery was the only difficult part of the whole expedition. Once we were there, we wandered around until we found her crypt in the mausoleum. It only took ten minutes or so - we just looked for flowers. I figured wherever Marilyn was, there would surely be flowers.

There she was, on the second row up from the bottom, surrounded by people I'd never heard of. (How strange to be an everyday Joe, interred for all eternity next to Marilyn Monroe!) Odd to think that was really her, at least in the physical sense. People had propped pennies atop the bronze nameplate, next to a suspended vase of pink roses and long purple flowers. Some had kissed the crypt, leaving red lipstick marks.

She has good company in that cemetery: Walter Matthau, Dean Martin, Mel Torme, Natalie Wood, Jim Backus. I also found both Eva Gabor and Eddie Albert, and spent a few moments laughing about "Green Acres," a really terrible show that I loved as a kid. True to the changing nature of Beverly Hills, lots of grave markers bore Iranian names and Arabic script.

Some people think cemeteries are eerie, but I find them fascinating. And apparently other tourists do too, at least in this case - there were several of us wandering around. I took some pictures, secure in the knowledge that none of the dead stars would mind. They lived their lives for the cameras, and it's actually a tribute to be remembered fondly ten or twenty or, in Marilyn's case, 45 years after your death.

Hollywood or Bust

So here I am in West Hollywood, land of towering Washingtonia palms and eternal 72-degree sunshine. I have not seen any movie stars. At least, none that I've recognized.

I landed yesterday at Long Beach airport shortly after noon, walked outside the terminal and promptly witnessed a car accident. Fortunately it was minor - a fender bender that did more damage to driver egos than anything else. But then, after my friend Christopher picked me up, we saw two more minor accidents and a car fire on the freeway. Christopher assures me L.A. is always like this.

I decided I needed some location-appropriate reading material on this trip, so I brought Joan Didion's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," a collection of essays at least partly about California's mysterious allure. The essays are 40 years old, so needless to say things have changed a bit, but it was pretty amazing to be sitting at The Coffee Bean on Sunset Boulevard yesterday afternoon and reading about Howard Hughes' house not far away. Joan Didion is an amazing writer.

SoHo, March 2007

Another shot from our heavy snow last week. I liked the careful way those pots were spaced, and that red gives the scene a nice jolt of color, though it's a bit subdued in the shadows.

In about three hours I'll be on a plane to L.A. to visit my friends Jerry and Christopher for a long weekend. I really like visiting L.A. They live in a great old part of West Hollywood, between Santa Monica and Sunset Boulevards, and I like getting out and exploring their neighborhood. (I shocked Christopher on my last visit by walking to Sunset Boulevard for coffee. He said, "No one EVER walks here!")

I took my cat to the vet to be boarded while I'm away, which I feel guilty about, because she HATES the vet. But she needs her thyroid meds, so that was my only alternative. If her thyroid levels are better now with the medicine, I think we'll be able to proceed with that crazily expensive treatment that should cure this problem once and for all. Which will reduce everybody's stress level around here...

Oh, and my shoulder is completely well, thank you for asking. I guess it was just a strain. I was back at the gym as usual this week and had no problems. Whew!

Anyway, I'm not sure what my blogging situation will be out in the Golden State, so posting may be more sporadic or I may just wait until I return on Tuesday. If that's the case, have a good weekend, everybody!