let it in.
It’s green - clear for miles. Los Angeles is momentarily fresh. I’m looking North toward the Angeles National Forest. The mountains cut a razor’s edge against the sky - piled with whipped clouds. It feels like Washington State. After a week of rains, anything feels like Washington. I ate Thai food at Tola and Diane’s last night. Their Mid-City apartment was built in 1923. It’s imitation-French, constructed for early Hollywood elite (the earliest) who wanted an air of Parisian opulence. Or something. Their apartment is lovely. I ordered Tom Kha Gai. Tola talked about experiencing one layer of separation from life - as the sky wept. Another deluge. His thoughts reminded me of a quote (CSL):
At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but… we cannot yet mingle with the splendors we see.
Baffling. I feel that way.
Diane said she doesn’t.
While drinking a Spindrift (the blood orange flavor), I told them I’m a deeply conscientious yet simultaneously transgressive person. By transgressive, I think I mean that I’m often falling short of my standards. I want to be so good and so alive and thoughtful and prolific and healthy and diligent and gracious and open and growing and grounded and learning and hospitable and humble and ambitious and well-adjusted but singular.
(I hope you tuned out halfway through that list. blah.)
Like I said: I’m often falling short.
The Tom Kha Gai was delicious, by the way. I recently discovered that I love Tom Kha.
Does your chest ever feel heavy or tight or achy? Maybe it’s anxiety or the strain of figuring things out, but I visualize cracking my chest open - nicely, kindly, like the satisfying crack of a farm egg - and all of the tightness dissipates and all of the clean light and breezes get in.
When the air is like this after so many showers - a sky billowing and crisp - I want to get out into it and be consumed. I want it to change me. I don’t want to be be separated. I don’t want to separate myself with strange and complicated standards.
I just want to let the freshness in.
Side-note (on freshness): thank you, Yani and Sierra, for introducing me to this artist:
