Julia Cameron is a genius. Morning pages do it again and I recently tried something previously scary and new-I took my bike on the bus down to West Hollywood for an adventure! Here’s a toolkit of essentials for such wonder-walks and fun-rides:
Ojai
There is a certain wildness about the California wilderness that is not present back East. The mountains are steeper, the roads and trails longer, more barren, the plants at once more menacing and thorny. Beauty bares fangs. Maybe it is the constant blazing sunshine, the bleached empty riverbeds and the scarcity of running water that conjures up panicked images of …
Hand-built Homes of the Imaginary Kind: Phoenix Commotion
Dan and Marsha Phillips are my heroes of the built world. They craft beautiful otherworldly homes, by hand (by hand!) for folks who can’t afford to buy a home. They assist in the loan application process and walk the owners through a hand-built home from recycled and discarded building materials, objects and whimsies. It is absolutely incredible. Wander over to …
Beach Summer Love
A remote beach 2 hours outside LA. It was beautiful, definitely one of the finer pleasures of living in Southern California.
LA-fication
And so it begun the LA-fication of H and I. The transformation is not yet over.
Genius Loci
The Griffith Observatory experience is a revelation on all levels. It is noble and humbling in intention yet grandiose and celestial in its undertaking. A 70 year old presence, a flawless renovation, so much genius loci it makes one weep. Like all things in the built world larger than life, the convergence of circumstances made it reality: an enthusiastic philanthropist, …
Los Angeles
Los Angeles-one month after our move. Sprawling, earthy, free, diverse, dreams, contradictions, ugly, beautiful, genuine, fake. Yes it is all true. All that is said about Los Angeles. But then again, forget it all. To understand LA is to understand it is at heart, a city of contradictions. So stereotyped yet so layered it is hard to put a finger …