From the feet up

M. Lee and I had our first foot massages today (Kathy's treat) and are we hooked! Being our resident expert researcher, M. Lee picked the place but, as he likes to keep his sources to himself, you didn't hear that he read about it at Yelp.com from me.




That little tidbit is definitely off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush. But Yelp is a user driven site so what the hey? Give it a whirl.



Los Angeles proper has a new Chinatown located where Little Italy used to be. That's where we had lunch yesterday, but the real new Chinatown is a few miles east of LA in San Gabriel, which has become a massive Asian ethno-burb. Incidentally, East West Magazine calls it the foot-massage capital of the country. That's where we ended up going. We started with Dim Sum at 261 Mission, then went to CCM Health Inc. I have nothing to compare them to but when Kathy's in China she gets a foot massage every day. She rated them as one of the best.



In spite of having a horribly dry corporate sounding name, CCM turned out to be a tiny, homey hole in the wall with the ambient charm of a psyche's parlor but instead of crystal balls and tarot cards it is stuffed with big easy chairs and has a couple of corners curtained off for full body massage. Foot massages used to run about $70 an hour but are now so popular that competition is up and prices down. Ours were $15 an hour plus tip. We're planning to return again on Monday, which is our last day in LA and the Do Over - Pick Up Day. We all agree that a foot massage needs to be on the top of the list.



So. Now I'm a reviewer of foot massage parlors. Lovely. I never know where the words are going to take me. I am definitely not in charge here. For a while I was enjoying fitting the words to the page, like a crossword puzzle, not paying attention to what's filling the spaces as much as making sure they fit.



I'm kind of disgusted. No offense to reviewers. They get paid for writing the damn things. I'm just doing it because tapping away at a keyboard calms me. But at this point I'm like a poor rat in a cage tapping the pellet bar long after the pellets are gone. Sad.

But Los Angeles continues to be a fun city to visit.

We might as well be in a foreign country.

For most people in the world it is in a foreign country.

Hollywood,

City of Dreams.

Tomorrow we're going to Venice beach and I don't know where else. Our favorite place to eat so far is RFD, a little place on La Cienega that serves delicious organic vegan cuisine.

Every day is packed with fun. I can't stand it anymore.

I feel completely out of sorts without a little angst to ground me.

[next]

Worlds within worlds and poets under glass

Okay.



Santee Alley and Chinatown



two days rolled into one, with a passing glance at the tar pits.



We started at Santee Alley, which proved to be a great fun maze



like markets in Mexico





merged with a Hollywood





madhouse







a jumbled, swirling



temporary escape



from corporate



America





After the market we went to Chinatown, had lunch at Yang Chow's



and walked around



taking in the sights.



One morning, two worlds
then we went on to LACMA with hopes of also visiting the La Brea excavations going on next door.

Unfortunately, we just didn't have time to visit the tar pits. LACMA is just so huge. By the time we

were done, we were done but I did get a glimpse of the mammoth family at the pond. I've written about them here before. They haunt me. There they are, right on Wilshire Blvd, locked in a life or death drama. I know a guy here in Nevada who grew up in the La Brea area and remembers when giant fossilized skulls still protruded from the tarry sludge, mouths open, tusks thrust skyward, unchanged since the animals sank into the tar thousands of years ago. Now the bones, and so many more, have been excavated and this diorama stands in place as a memorial. The mother's feet are stuck in the gooey tar bottom of the pond and her mate and their baby, wild with fear and grief, watch helplessly from the shore as she tries to free herself. It's heartbreaking. The way the baby is stretching his trunk out to her, I can nearly hear his screams. It's as though the three of them have been struggling for the last 20,000 years to save her from an almost certain death.

We thought we might visit them and the excavation at Pit 91 after LACMA but as it turned out the museum was more than enough. M. Lee and I have been there before but still it was incredible and overwhelming. Along with everything else, the museum is currently showing Southern California Art of the 1960s and 70s and included were excepts from Semina, a "hand-printed, free-form, loose-leaf art and poetry journal privately published and distributed to a handful of friends and sympathizers" by Wallace Berman between 1955 to 1964, considered a "brilliant compendium of the most interesting artists and poets of its time."

The pages are displayed under a glass case. I looked for something from my uncle, not that I expected to find anything. Insanity and alcoholism scrambled him well before death finished the job. But I always check when there's anything about poets from the Beat era. I was just ready to move on and, to be honest, totally self-absorbed. Pointless. Why bother? Blah. Blah. Kathy found him. That's M. Lee's mom. She noticed that there was a poem by John Chance in the collection. She knew him in North Beach in the 50's, heard him read in the bars. Knew him from the scene. Mother of Beat Baby, don't ya know. She's a very cool lady. Bob Kaufman asked her to be godmother to one of his children, back in the day. In fact, it's her treat that we're in LA this week. She'd be in China now but her Chinese friend and traveling companion/interpreter had to opt out due to health reasons so the three of us came here instead. She found him ... Uncle John ... at the tar pit ... under glass.

The Security wouldn't let me photograph his poem. Museum rules. So I copied it and one more near by.

Talking Buddhism With My Lawyer


Every idea we took was carried to a point,
where it disappeared
into the infinity of possibility.

So there we sat.
There was something humorous
About charging out to the edge of the infinite

Only to find ourselves in that moment
Looking blankly across the table at one another
Locked in the same little room.

The ticker-tape clicking ignorant staccato
Outside the glass like a Zen Master.


~ John Chance


Excerpt from Pantopon Rose


Stay away from the Queen's Plaza, son ... Evil spot fuzz haunted by dicks scream for dope fiend lover ... too many lives ... heat flares out from the broom closet high on ammonia ... like burning lions ... fall on poor old lush workers scare her veins right down to the bone her skin pop a week or do that five-twenty-nine kick handed out free and gratis by NYC to jostling junkies ... So Fag, Beagle, Irish, Sailor, beware ...


~ William S. Burroughs

RIP Uncle John.

[next]

Getty and the goats

The first time I stood before Van Gough's "Irises", I cried. As far as I am concerned, it is the jewel of the Getty. And I cried again yesterday. I don't know why. I don't cry easily. I tear up over animal videos on YouTube and am outraged when children are drawn into the gruesome atrocities we adults spool and strut but, beyond that, I am dried eyed. Fool's tale. But this painting makes me cry.




"Irises" is part of the Getty's permanent collection but currently the museum is temporarily hosting a very disturbing exhibit by photographer Graciela Iturbide and good for them. Otherwise, they are merely caretakers of a lovely, very expensive archive of safe antiquities.




One section, titled "The Goat's Dance", I found not just provocative but heartbreaking. It put me in such a very dark place. I am in Los Angeles with M. Lee and his mother and at this point, they had the good sense to go their own way. We decided to meet in an hour and a half and I sat in front of the photos and wrote for a while. Sometimes, it's the only thing left to do.








After the Getty, we stopped by New Dvaraka, the Krishna temple on Watseka Ave. I lived there years ago, and at the temple's original location on La Cienega Blvd. It is so strange going back. We were there for the 4:40 darsan with the dieties, (viewing). I bought a new pair of kartals (cymbals) then we went across town for falafel, which turned out to be too rich.






So tomorrow in our little excursion de culture , off to Santee Alley, Chinatown, the LACMA, Rodeo Drive, followed by a drive through in Beverly Hills.

[next]

Notes on the fly

We are in LA

for the week

staying in a condo

in West Hollywood

with M. Lee's mom. Her treat.

This morning we are off to the Getty.

Bye.

[next]

Etude

I want to thank Roy for suggesting just the right name for the little Christmas card battery that earned his soul by playing on for weeks after being thrown in the trash. Etude. For warbling songs in the dark to the mice.

Etude. [French étude, from Old French estudie, study.] A short composition for a solo instrument featuring a point of technique but performed because of its artistic merit.

Etude. Like Mike the Headless Chicken who slept with his phantom head tucked under his wing until he died, six months after he was beheaded.

Etude. Life takes care of life.

Naming souls in the lateral universe

Béla Bartók + tiny mouse + one handed Santa + warped robot calliope music = ?

That Christmas card battery in my garage as been playing carols from the lateral universe for 13 days now and that, in my magical thinking, earns it a soul. Imagine one part Bartók on a macabre calliope (Roy's image), reincarnated as a tiny mouse (the mice in the garage get credit for that part though I have since relocated them to their new home along the Carson River.)

And the battery plays on. In case you can't make it out, in this clip it's belting out, "Santa Claus is coming to town". But it can't be long now, although I also thought that on the 31st when I made the first video of its plucky little concert. Yesterday, however, Santa with the missing hand took up the death watch.

I'm not meaning to start a debate over the existence or nonexistence of the soul just accept that everyone and thing gets a complimentary soul just for making it out here to the language barrier. So the little battery, the Christmas card dude, needs a name before entering the Great Silence but I haven't come up with one yet. Any suggestions?

Shut brain, open wallet

The other day I found this creepy little homily in a store dressing room. In keeping with the principles of perception management, which works best when the mechanics are hidden, it was placed high on the mirror, slightly out of sight but not out of range. I love the phrase, "This unattractive word". Obviously they are hoping to make customers feel "unattractive" if they don't splurge. I say tacky, desperate, and yes ... sinister.

The days of desks without roses

It's a dreary Saturday morning here in Nevada. Rain is washing away our fluffy white snow and after reading various posts about the horrors of the modern workplace cubicle, I found this sweet little NSFW clip at Drifty's which fits my mood to a T. Why T? I don't know. T has been the gold standard for fine fits since I was a kid. Glengarry Glen Ross has it all. Great writing. Great acting. And an office from the days when a desk was a DESK, real estate was HOT and men were, well... losers. Plus I love the line, "How should I know? I'm not a leash."

Glengarry Glen Ross

07:22
A similar scene has been playing in my head lately. In it, I am all the characters. It's chilling but I did get up early and write a new poem this morning and finished another I started a couple of days ago. I think it has something to do with my new desk which screams "crunch time", "do or die". "Coffee is for closers only".



Alec Baldwin