still-sound 215. Kittens and a Momma

There's a feline family living in my garden.  They just appeared around two weeks ago, a Momma cat and maybe five kittens.  They mostly hide in the lavender or watch me walk to my car while crouched under oleander leaves.  Sometimes from my bedroom window I see them on the driveway playing or all nuzzled up, nursing from Momma.

I keep a bowl of water out for them and every evening around 7 I leave a plate of food.  I can tell that they've become used to this routine and expect me to be consistent.  When I come home from work and get out of my car, I see their faces poking out from the shrubs reminding me of our little arrangement.  I wish I could keep one but I'm severely allergic to cats and they are most decidedly outdoor animals.

I need to call this woman I've heard of who will collect stray and feral cats, have them fixed and then return them or try to find foster homes.  I feel like I'm supposed to ask my next door neighbor if the Momma cat is his pet.  If so, I wonder if I should ask for his permission.  The kittens will grow up and then produce even more families to fend for themselves on the the streets of East Los Angeles.  But I don't think I will approach the neighbor.  If the cats do belong to him I don't think he cares.  The only thing he seems to care about is moving the beat up station wagon parked outside his house to the other side of the street on Wednesday mornings for street cleaning, then moving it back at 12:00 on the dot, when parking is permitted again.  He leaves the ugly car there at all times, except Wednesday mornings so that no one will park outside of his ugly house.  One time I brought my garbage cans down to the street on garbage night.  I left them next to my driveway towards his driveway - only because his brother had a massive truck parked on the other side of my driveway.  He came to my house to complain the next day.  He said that I didn't respect him.  

still-sound 214. Oh Good Grief!

The other morning I listened to a Vince Guaraldi record called Oh Good Grief!  I had heard one of its songs on the radio last week called 'You're in Love Charlie Brown'.  There were more electric instruments on the track than what I would have expected from Guaraldi.  The early 70s vibe of it made me think that Stereolab must have listened to this album a lot.  I found the record on Ebay and a few days later started playing it at home.  Schroeder is crouched over the piano on the cover and Snoopy has glasses and a mustache.

I completed my morning by brewing some coffee and snipping some flowers from my garden and putting them in a vase.  The purple flowers are heliotrope.  I don't know what the blue ones are called but I did grow them from a packet of seeds last year.  I like how the leaves look like dill.

still-sound 213. Fragrances at the end of a day

I took this picture from the house in France.  I like how it shows the color of the light
outside just before it gets dark.

Today I added a song to my current Spotify playlist by a pianist named Mine Kawakami.  My favorite TV show, At Home With Venetia in Kyoto regularly features Kawakami's music.  Her music sounds a little Classical with a hint of new age, like George Winston playing Bach.  Bright, simple and relaxing. I'm surprised it took me so long to look Kawakami up on Spotify but when I finally did I was pleased to discover a lovely piece I hadn't already known.  It's called Fragrances at the end of a day.  The title appeals to me.  I've found that the scents of trees, lawns and flowers seem to saturate and amplify as the sun goes down.  The evening smells considerably different than day.  

The first time I noticed the evening-scent-effect was as a very young kid.  I must have been particularly young since most of the memory seems to be hazy, but I do remember the smell perfectly.  My father was a photographer and would take pictures for various local businesses for advertisements and catalogs.  One of his clients was a stained glass maker named Morgan Bockius.  One day my dad came home from the Bockius workshop with a brown paper bag full of colorful glass beads, droplets and ornaments.  At that point in my life this was the greatest surprise I had ever received.  

My sister started taking piano lessons with Claire, the wife of Morgan Bockius.  My family was once invited to visit their home and workshop.  We walked through their expansive back garden.  They may have even owned a horse, but I remember nothing about this visit until the sun had almost entirely retreated.  The lawn was mown but not raked.  All the greens of the trees and shrubs were dark and shadowy signalling night.  The air was thick with a perfume which I now know to be hay.  That luscious, coumarin,  almond-cherry scent of hay.  My young nose had never smelled anything like it before.  We went inside the house because the air was becoming chilly.  We sat around a kitchen table lit by a yellow incandescent lamp and ate Brazil nuts from a bowl.  I had never had Brazil nuts before and would not have them again for, maybe twenty years or so.  My family wasn't a Brazil nuts kind of family.  I wouldn't know that the smell that intoxicated me that night was coumarin / hay until well over thirty years after the Bockius visit. 

When I was sixteen I asked my dad if he could ask Morgan Bockius if he needed or wanted an apprentice.  It seemed like the coolest thing someone could possibly do.  How cool would it be if I could now say that I apprenticed a stained glass maker as a teenager?  But I didn't.  I didn't have my driver's license until after I graduated high school and I assumed my dad wouldn't want to drive me to an unpaid internship.  

still-sound 212. Joshua Tree

Brennan and I stayed in Joshua Tree last weekend to celebrate his birthday.  We found a house out in the middle of nowhere.  We borrowed Rob's car (because it's so much nicer for road trips than my car.  Actually it's just nicer) and drove it down dirt roads to finally arrive at a little rental house.  There were swings outside and vast desert views.

I had never seen actual Joshua trees until this trip.  They're like the palm trees in LA except the palms are shorter and make the tree look hairy as they dry.  They grow into unexpected shapes making them appear like humans or monsters.  

On our second night we built a fire outside and sat on lounge chairs drinking wine, looking for constellations and listening to Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66.  Then we drank some more.  I had hoped (in vain) that we'd see UFOs, or at least one. 

We drove to the National Park the following morning and climbed over big rocks.  Some formed cave-like passages. We entered some. 

We filled Rob's car with cacti and desert shrubs that we bought at a nursery and headed back to LA.  Two hours later, we presented Rob with a fragrant orchid to thank him for letting us borrow his car.  

The day after Brennan's birthday he received a call from his mom to let him know that his cat had died the previous day.  When he moved to LA four years ago his mom agreed to look after Kitty at her home in Wisconsin.  I imagine they became very close.  When I got to Brennan's house in the evening his eyes were red and stung.  We drank more wine.  

I drew a picture based on a photo of Kitty.  We placed it on a table and looked at it while burning a stick of incense.

still-sound 211. The attic

I've been clearing my attic lately.  It's not insulated and after last summer I vowed that the attic would be cleared and insulated by next summer. I've had two people come by to quote on the job but neither of them wanted to take on the rather unpleasant task of the clearout.  I was told to contact hauling and removal guys at which point they'd quote on the insulation job.  'Forget it' I thought to myself.  I'll do it myself.  It'll be rather unpleasant but I'll take on the project little by little.

The job is horrible.  I won't lie.  I have to crouch down the entire time I'm up there.  My lower back suggests that I should have just contacted the hauling/removal guys. 

Mostly I'm filling heavy duty contractor garbage bags with building rubble, old roof tiles, garbage and a century's worth of dirt.  I came across some letters including one from The US Navy Recruiting Substation dated 1945.  It was addressed to a man in Mexico who was trying to enlist in the US Navy.  I wonder if this is how he came to live in Los Angeles.   Perhaps after serving in the Navy he became a chauffeur.  I found his chauffeur license up there as well.

Look at these notes written down on a Utility Trailer Sales Co.notepad.  It's from 1955.  I wish people still wrote with this kind of handwriting.

I bet Mr Duarte, the original occupant of my house never imagined that I would be finding his documents like this.  He's most likely not with us any longer.  If he served in the Navy in 1945, he was probably born roughly 100 years ago.  I can't believe no one thought to insulate this house in those 100 years.

After carrying down my last garbage bag for the night and hauling it outside, I went to my mom's house to join her for rice cake soup.  It's Chinese New Year today and one is supposed to eat rice cake soup since the rice cakes resemble coins.  Their consumption is meant to bring about monetary luck.  After eating, my mom asked me to leave so that she could watch her soap operas.  I walked past jasmine blooming by my front door.

still-sound 210. Revisit

On the night of Valentine's Day, Brennan and I went to the Los Angeles Theater downtown to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's.  The theater has been restored to the opulent glory of its historic past.  My friend Shahram owns it and graciously invited us to the screening.  We wore suits.  We were instructed to.  All the women wore cocktail dresses. They too had been instructed.

I've seen Breakfast at Tiffany's countless times as a teenager.  I remember certain scenes very well along with certain snippets of dialogue, like a drunk Holly Golightly reacting to Paul's criticism.  She threatens him: "It should take you exactly four seconds to cross from here to that door...I'll give you two".  

My friend Rachel told me that the line she best remembers from the film is "top banana in the shock department", enunciated in the signature Audrey Hepburn style.  

It's funny rewatching or rereading something you knew as a young person with a few years under your belt.  I used to think that Breakfast at Tiffany's was a cute love story about a kooky girl and a dependable, sensible guy.  Now I realize that it's all about selling your ass.  It's a game of players, strategizing gains from other people's desire.   Every character is a player.  In it to win it.

Until now I didn't appreciate how wonderful Holly Golightly's handwriting was.  I marveled at the little handwritten note she left for Paul Varjak, inviting him to her place for drinks.  The writing looks like the playful script Warhol used in his illustrations of shoes and cats.  

As a teenager I could appreciate that Mickey Rooney's portrayal of the Japanese photographer neighbor was hopelessly racist.  I didn't realize how cool his apartment was or that he performed the tea ceremony in this cool apartment.

I texted Shahram the day after Valentine's to thank him for inviting us to the screening.  He came by the perfume store where I work to say hello and to introduce me to his girlfriend Sarah.  She had an interesting camera with her.  It turned out to be a Polaroid and she took my picture.  When my likeness emerged on the emulsion after a couple of minutes, I thought that I looked cool.  Like my teenage self, only cooler and more sophisticated than my actual, clueless teenage self. With facial hair.

still-sound 209. Highly perfumed

The air outside my front door has been highly perfumed lately.  Although I don't see any, I certainly smell citrus trees in full blossom.  Maybe my neighbors are hiding them in their backyards.  I noticed the scent last week when I was sanding a sculpture on my front porch.  I've been working on one sculpture for two years.  This is the longest I've ever labored over a single object, and it isn't even large or highly detailed.  I just have such little time to be making things.  But while I was waiting for the plumber to finish fixing my drippy kitchen sink, I took advantage of being stuck at home to sand.  The scent of blossoms only made the task enjoyable and I felt lucky to have been able to spend so much time on the sculpture.

Today I waited three hours for the plumber to come back and have a look at the still-dripping kitchen sink.  Not knowing when he'd actually arrive, I dared myself to get one more thing done before he showed up.  I planted lily of the valley bulbs in a shady area, under camellia trees by the side of my house.  I planted a new cactus in a sunny spot next to the driveway. Rosie inspected my work. 

 I finished sanding the sculpture!  And rubbed oil on to its smooth surface.  The plumber arrived and fixed the sink.