I’ve been thinking about neighbourhoods these past few days. We’ve lived in a fair few during our years in America so far; settling into a new one always takes me some time. Once the initial excitement is over I become tortoise-like in my behaviour, withdrawing into my shell and peeking out occasionally as I move around the new environment establishing points of connection.
We’ve been home in Los Angeles for a week now. The whirlwind of our return has just deposited me down to the ground and I can finally take a breath!
I write this on the first day of September which always signals the onset of Autumn to me even as I prepare to fly back into the land of endless summer. It has been a wonderful and restorative month. There will be much to digest and act upon over the coming months as we settle back into the routine of home which is already beckoning with the start of school business for the children this coming week.
Today was the first day of the Buddhist summer course which we attend every year. Held at Sakya Changlochen Ling, a retreat centre situated amidst the rural beauty of the Dordogne, it’s a two week period that is one of the highlights of my annual calendar.
We’ve been in London for ten days now….. Manhattan pulls you at once into the vortex of her breakneck pace and Los Angeles will entice your involvement with her sublime indifference and lavender skies. London, by contrast, is a graceful hostess.
And so we travelled this week past. It’s a journey the three of us are accustomed to making; my thirteen year old son, three year old daughter and I.
Under the Red Sky was Bob Dylan’s 27th studio album. With its ominous title and deceptively simple songs it captured my imagination from the first time I heard it. It struck me today that I was a little younger than my eldest child when it was released; he is thirteen next month.
As summer’s end appears on the horizon the knowledge that I will soon be back in Europe becomes more tantalizing with each day that passes. The prospect of a trip back home has had me thinking about family and about an old Roman hero by the name of Aeneas.
I happened to be at the Raven Spa last evening. It’s a Thai spa in a cool part of town and I’d been meaning to visit for a while. Exquisitely fashioned, it transports you to a different time and space, one of old and quiet beauty.
As temperatures rise to an uncomfortable pitch in the height of summer here in LA, I often find myself slipping backwards through the humidity to the first months of our American adventure and the electric heat of that Manhattan summer.
We took a drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu a couple of nights ago; heading out into the hazy traffic of an LA summer evening…. I think there’s something about the nature of the American West that alters our understanding of the world and our place within it. Whether it’s ultimately positive or negative I really couldn’t say.
Eight years of memories and experiences - like looking though a kaleidoscope. The family who moved from London to Manhattan is a far away remembrance and yet it feels like only yesterday that we arrived in the searing heat of a New York summer. The elusive ghost of time past that slips away when one tries to fix upon it.
