Flip it!

Flipped view

From the roof of the Ace Hotel, using the wonders of digital photography, I've flipped this photo so it reads in the right direction.

During the days when the United Artists Theatre and Texaco Building were owned by evangelist Gene Scott's Los Angeles University Cathedral, two huge neon signs proclaiming "Jesus Saves" were installed on the building.

In 2011 after Scott's widow sold the building to a real estate investment firm, one of the signs was removed to parts unknown, but the second sign, facing to the west, still remains and still functions.

From the bar at the roof of the Hotel, you can look down on the back of the sign:

True view

Like LA, perpetually re-inventing itself.

Cold day in LA

View yesterday evening from the Ace Hotel upstairs bar

It's cold here in Los Angeles, about 45 degrees right now at 9:30 PM. There's a wind tossing the oak leaves around, and this wooden box of a house feels like it's breathing.

Cold and alone, just me and the dog. I'm going to snuggle up in bed with a book.

In the 'Bu

It’s a brilliant, clear Saturday in December, and we’re going, for the first time in the 18 years we’ve lived in Los Angeles, to the Malibu Pier.

Built in 1905, the Pier’s entrance is impressive though almost fortress-like compared to the other coastal piers in Southern California. Solid stone walls, studded with rustic rock inserts, flank the entry, marked by two Spanish-style towers. Massive wooden gates hinge open to a relatively short wooden pier. Within, small wood-frame buildings house a restaurant, dining room to the right and bar and deck to the left. The far end of the pier broadens into two charming pavilions, painted white with blue trim, for a café, bait shop, and sport fishing business.

On this bright and clear winter day, the sun is low in the winter sky, glancing off the turquoise water. There’s a pleasant but cool breeze blowing. Tourists snap selfies at the rail. Latino families with fishing poles cluster around coolers and boom boxes. From out on the Pier, you can see several angular and sprawling modernistic homes, architectural gems hidden high on the bluff above the road.

Jack the dirty dog

Jack slipped out the door this afternoon as we were bringing groceries in the house, and when he returned later, he bounded inside with his feet absolutely filthy with black, foul-smelling mud, tracking footprints all over the wood floor.

Here he looks properly embarrassed as I try to clean him up.  I don't think he likes having people clean his feet, because he slipped away and back out the door. I chased him up to the street and found him stopped, stark-still, at the top.

He was staring up the road to where two deer were standing, just near the drainage culvert. They stood as still as he, and stared at him.

So that's where he was - chasing deer through the ravine.

Bright, cold and clear

Merry Christmas! It's bright, cold and clear here in Topanga, California.  I hope the season is bright where you are!

Pretty sunset

Tonight.

Done

Today, I've completed all my applications for graduate school. Ten schools, applications are complete and paid for and at least three letters of recommendation have been sent to each school.

The schools I've applied to are:

• University of Iowa Non-Fiction Writing Program
• University of California at Riverside Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts
• Otis College of Art and Design MFA Writing Program
• Mount St. Mary's College MFA Creative Writing Program
• Louisiana State University MFA Creative Writing Program
• University of Pittsburgh MFA Creative Writing Program
• University of Alabama MFA Creative Writing Program
• University of Arizona MFA Creative Writing Program
• University of New Mexico MFA Creative Writing Program
• University of New Orleans MFA Creative Writing Program

Now I want to contract a case of amnesia, until I hear from each school some time in March.

Girl on a Swing

She is alone, a woman or perhaps a big, ungainly girl. She is by herself in the park on the swing. It is a cool winter day, a touch of rain in the air, the sky grey.

Her garnet red hair floats like a nimbus about her head as she pumps with her feet, knees bent and then fully extended, toes pointing to the sky.

She wears baggy jeans and a jacket that rides up above her rump, cradled in the broad hoop of the belt seat. Her backpack and shoes are piled in the sand by the strong steel legs of the swingset.

I don't know how long she has been here, but as I watch, taking an afternoon break, she continues to swing without stopping, without slowing. She was swinging before I came out. She will still be swinging when I leave. The chains sing rhythmically in the shackles and hooks: up and back, up and out, singing ringing chinging.

She is not swinging for me. She is not swinging for the handful of toddlers across the walkway, playing in the sand. She is swinging for herself.

Green shoots

Today it rained again, for the third time in two weeks. It's supposed to rain more today, heavily with possible thunderstorms.

I took Jack the dog for a walk this morning during a steady sprinkle. With only two weeks of rain, now there are fresh, green new blades of grass coming up all along the road.

I haven't seen deer in our woods since the rains came. With new growth to browse on, I think they are staying in the park and wilder parts of the mountain, instead of coming close to our houses and neighborhoods.