Monday, April 01, 2013

A CHANCE FOR RESURRECTION?


        So it was Easter, and I had the glowing privilege of spending it with the daughter of Muggy, my dearest friend from Bryn Mawr, and her beautiful (mostly handsome) family, Heidi, or as she is known in more serious circles, Cecil.  We went to her church in Santa Monica, St. Augustin by the Sea, where all was Love and Light and sweetly dressed babies whose socks matched the bows in what there is of their hair, the sight of which inspires a reaffirmation of Life, the things you reach for when there is a need for connection and a hope for what is higher.  I really think it doesn't matter where you go to believe in something-- the important thing is to have an aim and make sure the aim is true.   So to be with people you love on an occasion meant to be uplifting is probably as good as it gets.
         The day before had been spent looking for an apartment here. It becomes clear, in a smoggy way, once back in LA, that pointless suffering is, indeed, pointless, and there is no downside in being comfortable.  The sun here has been less than radiant and hot.  But it is sun, and that distinguishes it from what has passed this winter, extended, in New York: a sky that would have given pause even to registered Depressives. 
         So I checked out a few places for rent in Beverly Hills, the walking part-- that is to say there are a number of sidestreets within actual footsteps of restaurants and stores that have places to live on them that might work for one who has decided not to engage in the traffic that deadens minds and aborts patience-- in other words I have decided not to have a car, to be the only one in Los Angeles who walks. And I saw some not bad places to live, one of which came with its own homeless man, who had found the door open, and apparently took a shower, as his chest, exposed, was wet, and it wasn't hot enough to be sweat.  I don't think he was included in the rent.
         This is a strange journey, as I believe it's true that You Can't Go HomeAgain, but as I have never really known to my core where home was, I guess it's okay for me to flop around the universe, at least this side of it, while I still can.  +Frank Bowling, who was once and shiningly the manager of the Bel-Air when it really was the Bel-Air, used to say 'Welcome Home,' the mark of a brilliant hotelier who imbued you with a sense of obligation to love the place as much as he did.  But those days are past, as are most things to which we were attached before this Age of Not-Really-Communication, the loss of eye contact, as people fixate on the little device in their hand, which only the very high-minded and conscious seem to turn off even in the presence of friends with whom they are having a meal, so afraid they might miss something they miss the present moment, which, as Jack could tell us, is All there really Is.  "The past is memory, the Future is Fantasy," he said, obviously correctly.
        But as I still buy into Fantasy, since that is what largely sustains dreamers, which I admit I am, I have to play this one out.  I told Heidi yesterday I had been thinking of giving up my dream, but reflecting on that, I realized you can't give up your dream, or it wasn't really a dream.  Something elusive, like Faith, like Love, which, even when lost or evanescent, is still shining, moving you ahead.  Making you look up.  Or at least, not at your I-phone.