The Raymond Chandler part of downtown LA with gorgeous old aqueducts.
Already the goodbyes have begun. On the Sunday apres we meet the San Fran kids for brunch in Echo Park before they drive back up the coast. We stand on the corner of Sunset and Effie, at what must be the longest light in history. [...]
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The six days in Los Angeles were gorgeous.
My mom, Karen, lent us her cottage in Laguna Beach and when we arrived we discovered it tricked out in every way you can imagine: French press bought especially for Alfonso, fancy soap, candles, wine, linen sheets, snacks for days. It was a little [...]
Ali flâneur-ing outside Gunter’s atelier.
Beyond the general city-dwelling and snacking, we also enjoyed days delving into the world of European haberdashery. The quest? An ensemble for Monseigneur Rutigliano to marry in. He’s no Beau Brummell, but my man is quiet the dandy in his own way, which made this task a real–though delightful–challenge.
Part of the [...]
“BASTA!” is the word to know, it means ENOUGH! and I learned it quickly. Without this term I would have simply expired from the whole fish baked with capers olives parsley garlic, handmade pizza, handmade pasta pomodoro, asparagus and gambero pasta, meatball pasta, cold octopus and mussel salad, and on and on.
Every meal prepared [...]
“You really can’t go home,” Ali said. We were standing in the dark in front of the summer apartment in Senigallia once owned by his parents. All his childhood and teenage summers were spent there, or in the two treasured movie theaters that are now a car showroom and a casino.
We stood staring up [...]
I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine.
I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes.
I lived on honeycomb.
~Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
I have been writing a character I call My Neptuna. The work is going slowly this week, lots of resistance, and so today I thought, if my mind [...]
Perhaps I was too glib when the ostrich bit me. In retrospect it seems a harbinger of much that was to follow.
This weekend we explored the Loue Valley, following along the winding Doubs river that runs from Switzerland to France. The Loue river was discovered to be a tributary of the Doubs when in 1901 [...]
“Goths are not born, they are made.” my dear friend Michelle says as we stand on the corner of Hollywood and Sunset Blvds. We have just been to the $5 Sunday matinée at the Vista, a refurbished Egypt-Deco theater from the 1920s that to me is so very Hollywood-of-my-childhood, tho technically it’s in Los Feliz. [...]
Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.
~Truman Capote
Tonight, after another day of resting on my back and dreaming of the city beyond my windows–the world of birds and bells—the menfolk return to roast a chicken and potatoes and flourishing salad and a lily for me, now displayed on the [...]
Will you take me as I am–strung out on another man–California I’m coming home.
A lyric quote from Joni Mitchell can only mean one thing–
I spent a few days visiting Noria at the Marin Headlands where she is an artist in residence. It was gorgeous.
Northern California still has a strong pull on my heart. As N [...]