It’s been one of the strangest weeks that I can remember. One by one various aspects of our daily life have simply floated away on the breeze until we are left as we are now, amidst a shrunken landscape which seemed to have closed its shutters around us all.
There’s a sweet little preschool on our street just a few doors down from our house. Called Happyland it has a brightly painted gate and I often happen to be out and about with the dog at drop off and pick up time. Duke adores children and he enjoys walking past the school or sniffing nearby and saying the odd hello when parents ask if their child can pet him.
‘Rage: Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage,
Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades’ dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus’ will was done.’
Rough winds and frigid temperatures blew into Los Angeles last night hard on the heels of a heatwave. We were woken suddenly from slumber at midnight by the banging of a loose door on our roof terrace. Comically large palm tree branches festooned the streets this morning as we drove to school
In my wanderings around our new neighborhood I’ve found a lovely spot for contemplation. The Culver Hotel built in 1924 is a wedge shaped Art Deco building which reminds me of the Flatiron Building in Madison Square Park in Manhattan, although their architectural styles are different. It stands in the middle of the bustling downtown area and has a charmingly leafy patio which whispers of long lunches and intricate conversations.
We’ve been swept up in a whirlwind of change these past few weeks. As the old year rolled without pause into the new we packed up our apartment in Brentwood and moved across town to the home we recently purchased in Culver City. We have been busy ever since with the work of unpacking our life into a new abode and the experience of dwelling alongside more boxes than we cares to count.
There are rumblings of change in our existence here which have grown loud enough to be considered imminent in the last few days. Packing boxes and tape are stacked up by the front door and it looks like our dog will have a new park to explore very soon. I awoke this morning to that familiar feeling of a fresh beginning waiting impatiently in the wings for the next act while the stage sets of scenes gone by are removed.
We woke up to rain today. With the air of excitement and impending chaos that rain conjures here in the sun drenched climes of Southern California it was a fitting backdrop to my daughter’s return to school. She’s been out of action for over two weeks with a cold that slid inexorably into a pneumonia that had us all more worried than I can ever recall being with her.
I love the word solitude. It’s pure Latin of course, as many of the best English words are. A good Latin dictionary will give you a thought provoking array of possibilities to translate the noun solitudo-solitudinis (third declension feminine) ‘a being alone, loneliness, solitariness, solitude, lonely place, desert, wilderness, desolation, want, destitution, deprivation, orphanage, bereavement.’
Los Angeles has been burning again. I returned a week ago from a spell of tranquility and awoke the next morning to hear that the overly dry brush had ignited once more and an uncontained fire of several hundred acres was roaring into life up the road. Schools were closed and the acrid tang of smoke and ash hung heavy in the air.
My daughter’s swimming lesson has changed recently. As she’s now begun stroke introduction and graduated to the big pool she is starting at 4.00pm. The pool is quiet and mostly empty at this time in marked contrast to the later slot we used to take when lessons galore were in full force and splashing and shrieking were the order of the day. The somnolent quiet and rippling blue water have a strangely atmospheric effect and I’ve been finding that it’s surprisingly easy to fall through time and into the aquamarine memories of yesteryear.
We just did that rare thing that parents do occasionally; we took a weekend away to ourselves in celebration of our seventeenth wedding anniversary, abandoning the children to the care of a beloved babysitter. It’s always the onrush of stillness that surprises me at first. Having reached our destination, we both sit and look at one another quizzically; what to do first when there’s nothing that really must be done at all?
