I am in no mood to write on my blog these days. Apathy mostly. I am moody, a little withdrawn perhaps. One might say I have an autumn mindset. Leaves have fallen and the sky is cloudy and dark. Why on earth should I be happy?
I think of many things I can write about. Happy, positive things! But when one negative thing just sits there bothering you, nothing else seems to matter. Know what I mean? (Now say that last line with the same earnestness of the stage manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.)
My whole travel schedule is up in the air because someone from work is coming to the US next week for two days and would like me to be here. What this means is my other Europe trip gets pushed back to the week after particularly because next Thursday and Friday are bank holidays in that country.
Enough complaining. After all is my “happy birthday to you” today.
Before all this began, when life was a perfectly comfortable sixty-nine degrees, I would get in my car and drive down Kanan Road to PCH to Coogie’s which is a little restaurant in Malibu. (Next time you sit down to watch Austin Powers part II where Mike Myers say how England Countryside looks nothing like Southern California, pause your DVD player. That is Kanan Road.) I would sit down with a newspaper and order a Santa Fe omlette. In a corner, sitting with two young boys would be Pamela Anderson, which her face partially covered in poodle hair. I would drink a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Or if it is the evening, I could amble into Barefoot bar (were mel Gibson recently got drunk) and get myself a Martini. And the sunset would be spectacular. Sunset is always spectacular if you are on PCH in the evenings.
Two days in a row, Kenny G trailed my car on PCH around that time. His car was black, mine silver. We raced up Kanan through the tunnels in the night. That was a pretty good time. Why can’t I have that day today?
I am cursed to put up with Kenny G in more ways than that. I have been trapped in close quarters with Kenny G that I needed to wash my face off his saliva that accompanied the awful muzac he produces. I once met an Indian in a Pow-Wow who claimed he was the one who taught Kenny G how to play his music. Damn Indians!
Still, I would be happy.
There are days when I could drive relatively fast to get to Redondo Beach in the evening after work. There is a beachside restaurant with live Flamenco performers. The boardwalk is wide and the beach is peaceful.
I miss it. I miss the stillness of palm trees in the evening when the wind dies down. Driving by the ocean, you pass a power plant and if you lie down on the beach, you can see the underbellies of planes are they take off from LAX into the sea.
It is so much better to see the underbellies of planes than being inside them. It is so much better to be a giver of random kindness than be a recipient of intended cruelty.
I am going to close my eyes and breathe in slow. I think I can smell oranges and lemons. California is a state of mind.
