through hazy eyes

Some phone snaps taken over the past two months:

1. The Eastern Columbia Building downtown on Broadway - this looks so gorgeous lit up at night and is easily the best example of Art Deco architecture in downtown Los Angeles.
2. I passed by this booth of vintage industrial furniture without regarding it too closely, then did a double take upon noticing this marker-scrawled folding chair. Andy and H (and maybe an abstract fish?), wow :3.
3. A handful of translucent, waxy mystery seeds that I WOULD know the name of had I harvested them myself. But they were in the hands of an art professor that I had met a mere 15 minutes before. (edit: they're amaryllis seeds!)
4. Semi-crepuscular rays in Highland Park, mid-October. When the sky looks this way, it elevates even the most tedious drive...
5. A deliciously soft, sweet and chewy hachiya persimmon, courtesy of our family mechanic! I so wish I had more of these to munch on throughout the winter months, they are like candy.
6. Mushrooms fit for a hobbit! (except for the fact these are of the toxic lawn kind).

salvation mountain

Y and I have had Salvation Mountain on our list of places to visit for years now, and two weeks ago on a whim we decided to make the drive out to Slab City, where it sits on the fringes of. It was about three hours each way - I drove, and Y snoozed as she had been up at an ungodly hour the night before. When we arrived I felt an eerie sense of excitement, and the bright adobe/painted hill welcomed us with crazy, earnest declarations of love for God, along with other Christian sayings and verses from the Bible. I admired the intensity and passion that must have filled Leonard Knight to compel him to create this art installation, though my own days of piety and prayers for salvation are a thing of the past. When the colors and sayings became too much, I focused instead on the construction of the piece - eyeing bales of hay, rolls of chicken wire and branches and imagining how the project would have been pieced together. We walked back to the car, but not after pocketing a few rocks, and started the drive back.

But who drives all the way out to Niland, CA from Los Angeles and skips a visit to the Salton Sea? Not us! We stopped at Bombay Beach, which was eerily quiet. It didn't have that fresh salty smell of a saline body of water - more of a rank, tired odor, and there were dried up skeletons of fish strewn all over the shore, as well as decrepit remains of houses and shacks sadly leaning over on their last breaths. It was weird and beautiful.

On the last leg of the trip, we made a point to view the Cabazon dinosaurs, but didn't feel up to paying $8 each to see what we assumed would be kitschy life-size dioramas of said dinosaurs in semi-realistic settings. We were happy enough to see the T-Rex and Brontosaurus at the entrance. As we left the heat of the desert and the swooping wind turbines, heading back to (at the time) rainy L.A., I exhaled a silent sigh - happy with the small adventure we had, and grateful for the freedom and panache we possessed to make it happen.

the light returns

Thanksgiving was almost a week ago, and the days following it for the long weekend were days of utter bliss. For hours at a time I did literally nothing, which at the time made me feel a little guilty, but looking back, the idleness equaled precious decompression time. Not at all do I regret the lazy hours spent with my sister on our freshly cleaned red couch, munching on two different types of Trader Joe's cookies, exchanging idle chatter/profound ideas, watching multiple episodes of Breaking Bad, then switching to Jim Jarmusch's 'Dead Man' when I got too stressed out about the former. Interspersed with visits from A, who came back down for a quick Thanksgiving break, as well as a long adventurous bike ride with my sister, it was a satisfying, languid long weekend.

A sorted out this multi-tool (you can see me in the spoon!) that my sister had picked up for me at a flea market over the summer, and now that all the components are unfolded I can clean it up real nicely. I handed him all my recent rock finds and listened intently as he patiently studied and identified them. The two close-ups are a really roughed-up quartz that I found on a hike in Griffith Park, and another dark quartz-ish chunk I found at the construction site in Hollywood. You all probably know this, but the translucent quality of both are the most obvious indicators of the presence of quartz in the rock. I like how they glow when the light hits them.

One more month until the year is over! Let us finish it strong.

construction details

I am really thankful for my job for the close proximity it affords me to have to such a large and busy construction site! I walk the site maybe once a week, but I am going to have to up it to three times or so to accurately document the flurry of activity that is ongoing. Much of my job has lacked a creative slant to it, it has really just been documentation, observation, and interpretation of information/ideas (which is...slightly creative) but the good thing is that the past several months have been much BUSIER, and I have gotten a better sense of my duties and how I can be useful to the office.

I feel like I haven't had much to say the past few weeks, but those lulls in life are inevitable, so it isn't a big point of 'crisis' like I've made of such silences in the past. And I have been reading again! And generally I've found some more time for myself, which feels like a giant breath of cold, fresh air...so, no complaints here.

new home

My sister and I moved out of the San Gabriel suburbs, out of our mother's house, to a new place of our own. A few days ago I met another occupant of our quadplex, and she asked me, with a teasing smile 'How are you liking it here - how d'you like the noise.' And though yes, there's the obvious presence of rambunctious little neighbor kids and a lot more street traffic/noise, the price of freedom is well worth it. The commute to work is shorter, even if by a fraction, the neighborhood is super-walkable, fairly bike-able, and there's lots to explore. Yesterday evening, we walked to our local polling location and dropped off our ballots, then got pizza at a tasty Italian joint and headed back home - to new home.

of my word

I try to be as much a person of my word as I can. With that being said, life totally, completely takes over at times, and promises of a letter, a care package, a phone call or a hangout extend into that grey area of 'it WILL get done, just not now.' I don't mean to sound like I'm flippantly rationalizing my habits of late; I'm just offering a (vague) explanation. Work's been busier, living situation has evolved, the nights are getting colder, and hopefully I will get back into my groove soon.

falling into place

Yikes, I started this post on October 8th, and am only just revisiting it now. So many changes are afoot as I feel like I'm always saying, and they are good changes. I'm finally caught up with correspondences (!!!) and I'm busy with other work, though I haven't been working on anything personal for two weeks. To explain the above: I found a real baby carrot amidst the bunch of carrots we buy from the farmer's market every Sunday morning. Cute and deliciously sweet! I got a light-as-air mohair/wool cardigan in the deepest colors of Middle Earth and have been wearing it every chance I get - you can definitely sense the nip of autumn in the Southern California air, but lately the days have been going like this: nippy and sharp early in the morning, mellowing out to scorching heat during the day, then cooling back down rapidly late at night. Southern California! And lastly, the boy sends me pictures of his wonderful succulent collection that he adds to at opportune moments, which inspired me to do a little sketch of one of them - it's like a delicious succulent salad! Alright, back to work!

hike at griffith park

Last Friday I didn't have to go in to work at the usual time, so I stopped over at Griffith Park for a short hike! Nothing really new to report - the terrain looked slightly different from the usual San Gabriel Mountains, but that isn't an issue at all. There was some light cloud cover that day, so the light was hazy and muted and made for an easy trek. I've never gone on a hike like that on my own...it was rather nice. :)

last bits of september

1. Watercolor hearts for a tile installation mock-up my mom was fiddling with.
2. The results of wearing sandals to a crappy local dive, ewwww. (The circle around the left bite - an experiment by a friend claiming if you circle your bug bites, they will cease to itch. It kind of worked!)
3. A 'windowpane' view of mountains through a slight morning haze on a hike with sister... we're really putting this annual adventure pass to great use!
4. I made an embossed aluminum star as a sample for one of my mom's lessons. Mindless and fun...I think she will be wanting more to hang up all around our OWN house now.

Happy October! I've barely had time to slow down and breathe, so projects have slowed to a (temporary) halt. I should be starting/finishing letters right now instead of writing this blog post, actually. I'm not complaining about the flurry of activity - I just need to adapt.

pen, ink, music

1. Projects!

2. Pen pal packages! 

Phew! Excuse my lapses here...sometimes I think about things I want to share, then feel like such a thing would be over-sharing, or insignificant. Other times I think about writing something down, then lose interest almost immediately/something else catches my eye and I walk away. I've had a slow-down of taking pictures, or even having my camera on me, which seems to consistently happen once a year for a short burst of time.

I've been drawing a LOT, and I try to make time to every day. I have this project in my mind that I need to bring to completion for my own, personal satisfaction. Friend-wise, I have been keeping it up with my long-distance ones (letters, mixtapes, presents!), and I reconnect in a cyclical fashion with old friends who are close by, but busy in their own right. Busy busy scrambling around trying to make things work, trying to learn, trying to live without losing sight, taking care of body, mind, heart, there is so much happening, so much to do! I'm trying to stay on top of things, I hope you are, too!

Hello. I miss you.

cool & unusual

What I thought was a GIANT fuzzy red ant is really a species of wasp (the female being wingless, red & furry) called the velvet ant, or more sinisterly - the 'cow killer.'

Giant old machines in one of the historical buildings undergoing renovation at work! Huge elevator operating lift and a defunct steam machine (???) from the 1920s.

Squid pens! My fondest memory of these is dissecting squid during an accelerated after school class in elementary school, popping the ink sac and writing my name with the extracted 'pen' (gladius!).

A delicious ripe fig, sneakily snatched off a giant tree at the end of a hike :X. Celebrating the end of summer!

organization/inspiration

1. Flea market finds from GCC. The highlight/downfall of no longer having to work on Sunday mornings.
2. A little project I finally got to complete for a pen pal, whew. Sometimes I wish inspiration/my motivation wasn't so fickle.

I like pretty old things (but who doesn't?!) and nowadays I gravitate toward pretty old useful things. The textbook is probably not-so-useful to me, but reminded me of a certain someone. The drawings were included with a mix-tape (mix-cd...) for an awesome friend who I hope to meet for real, in person, in the near future with my sister. Someday! It makes me happy to be able to connect to and cultivate friendships with people, whether in face-to-face interactions or through the Internet. And then the excitement of new friends will remind me of the old friends, and just rolls me through the cycle of catching up with said seasoned friendships. Mind you this isn't a cut-and-dry formula - just thoughts of the moment. I'm really trying for consistency though.

end of summer

We had rain in the San Gabriel Valley yesterday! And right before the Labor Day Weekend, what timing. I have been feeling rather quiet these days...feels like I don't have much to say. Preoccupation with work and basking in my days off/looking for more work, personal projects and putzing around helping others with projects is what I mostly find myself doing. I've really gone into hermit mode otherwise - evaluating what's important to me, people to make an effort with and who to just let go, treating people things everything right, enriching my mind and body and just keeping clear of poison. Three old friends I have recently been in contact with all asked me a question along the lines of "So what are your goals/what do you want/where are you headed?" I mostly know what I want, am half-certain of the means of getting there, but am cognizant that I can't be in complete control of everything. So I guess I am saying for myself, make sure you put in a hell of a lot of effort in everything you do, but let yourself breathe a little, roll with the tide.