Lunch at the Chateau (Marmont)

Today is a rare day, even for the Djinn in retirement. After I served at Mass this afternoon, I was free to do as I wanted.  No important errands. No favor to be accomplished. No volunteer activity whatsoever.

I did pick up a tarp at the 99 cents store because we have been informed that it might rain in Southern California and I have terrace furniture to protect.  Right now, there is a significant breeze and errant rain like clouds overhead blocking the sun occasionally. So just maybe we will get the first of a rain for which California finds itself in extremis.

But a few hours ago, it was sunny and seasonable and I decided to do something I have long wanted to. I walked all of four blocks and up a hill to the Chateau Marmont and on an impulse had lunch in "The Restaurant". 

I think this comfort is a product of being at an age when I am largely invisible. I might well have been the eldest person there. And though I remain a bit of a wanna be, I am not presently vaguely in the entertainment industry. There was no one I recognized until Mark Ruffalo came handsomely breezing in, seeming like a very nice guy.

I found myself considering the look of the women. I generally don't share too much of my internal world in these pages, but heck, I am at that age now, also when frankly I realize that my internal world doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the scheme of things, so what's to hide?  I was looking to see in them what I have been told is missing in me, (and I don't quite disagree as it happens) although it might be nice if people did not feel that they have a right to make overt observations about me when I could make equally difficult observations about them I am certain they would be enraged to hear.  I was recently told that I look asexual, that I dress asexually, that I am fat (true) and that if it is true (it was my fault for saying that I wouldn't mind having a soul mate, but I meant just that a SOUL mate; I wasn't speaking of anything particularly sexual) I wanted a soul mate then I had to lose weight and go to Beverly Hills and change the way I dress. This came from a Hollywood (I mean Hollywood prime) friend who was on his way to rehab and who isn't looking his very best at the moment and my first reaction was to scream, "Are you kidding me?!" with all attendant expletives.

So, there I was looking at the women. Three in front of me, one of whom had the trendy hat, each with identical full pouty lips and ample well presented bosoms. The three men with them looked like slobs, but that seems to be the trend.  The women dress, the men wear track pants. Another woman, large, dressed baggily, even more baggily than I do ever and to whom the word asexual might apply, was with a fairly handsome man, and they seemed fully a couple. How different did I wearing a nice pair of black pants and a casual but frilly ish turquoise shirt look from them? Older to be sure, as I keep dwelling on, for I think the average age in the room was 30. What did I lack? The willingness to put my feminine self out there?  The promise of sex?  To say that there is more to life than the promise of the giving or receiving of sex is to be downright heretical in this society. There have been moments, Lord help me, that I have wondered whether I have been greatly mistaken in thinking there is more to life than that. That is the subject of someone's dissertation perhaps, but not mine, here.

By the by, though, I did not think that I fell particularly short in the looks department or the dress department among these kids. Is it possible that I am just who I am, just as I am, with positives and limitations, just like every one of the souls in this beautiful arched courtyard?

I wasn't overly preoccupied with these thoughts happily.  I had a blast in that space, two prosecos, and a chicken salad and cappuccino, without a care in the world for like an hour and a half, talking to the hostess (an army brat she said) and being well treated by Scott the waiter. No demands. No expectations.  Good enough and even better for it being as different from the life I knew in the Bronx as going to Venus might be. I paid my 45.00 plus tip bill and walked back down the hill to my West Hollywood apartment, where I tell you the tale.

This is a place I'd go back to. . .alone or with others. Surprisingly unpretentious for the attendance of the arguably pretentious or the potentially pretentious.  My neighborhood. Where Schwabs used to be. And the Garden of Allah. At the entrance to Laurel Canyon.  All in all, I am a lucky girl.

And when I came home, a message from my friend in rehab, letting me know why he had not been in touch (and talk about too much information) and reminding me that as he was getting himself together I was to do the same in terms of my, well, let's say, look. I think I might have committed myself to doing something. Well, it couldn't hurt to lose weight anyway! 

The clouds have rolled in fully. I am praying for the rain to relieve us from the drought. And thankful for a pleasant interlude before they did.

All the Small Crosses

 

The trees have been groomed these last two days courtesy of the City of West Hollywood.  This is lovely. There will be fewer hard falling fronds to dodge.

But the process was unmerciful as it combined with several other events in my living area.

Let me elaborate in my lament.

Last year, our condo redid half the building roof.  It was the only way to begin the too long put off work--which was needed even when my father lived in this apartment but minimize the already pretty steep assessment required of the homeowners. The other half had to be done, and the Board took a vote to do it now, before what they said would be a winter's El Nino. (We can only hope for that would bring the rain of which we are in dire need in California..)  For at least two days, cars would have to absent themselves from the garage so that the big truck of the roofers could be put in a spot for the removal and dumping of the old tar covering.

Meanwhile, for about the last month, a new building has been going up a few doors away, the concrete and other sundry trucks making an obstacle course amid the pounding of the ground and the yelling of the workers and the honking of the horns of distressed drivers. Meanwhile, the City decided that it was time to trim the high palm trees in the block, forbidding day parking on much of the street onto which our cars had been banished. Is that something like a hat trick in hockey?

I may be retired, but I have a variety of projects and activities that sometimes cause me a bit of stress.  I allowed myself, for example to take the lead on something for which there is turning out to be little consensus and even less approval and I see the handwriting on the wall that I am to be the bad guy, despite my intense best efforts.

So, when, yesterday, I woke up, uncharacteristically early, to thundering feet across my apartment ceiling (the thundering caused a glass cover on one of our common area lights to drop and shatter), and loud pulling and scraping of tools, combined with the thrilling sound of the as loud buzzing of tree trimming, and the usual sounds of trucks pounding through for the new building nobody in the block wanted that was forced upon the.citizenry, I was nearly beside myself with the need to escape what is usually my shoebox of solitude (it isn't big enough to be a fortress). 

While I was dressing for escape  to, as it happens, the dysfunction of my parish office where I volunteer, a friend called for advice on a subject of which I have little experience . I looked for some spot in my apartment where there was not pounding or scraping or buzzing, while I worried about getting my car out before the gate was blocked. I tried to be kind and responsive while desire to pull out my hair was overtaking me.

I am fortunate truth to tell. These are small crosses to bear. And yet, isn't it interesting that I fail to be grateful for the fact that, thus far, and I pray for the future, I am not faced with the panoply of hardships which beset friends and so much of my fellow men?  More than that I am an angry mass of loud complaint and raging woes to me!  At such moments, I find that the thing I should most do is the last thing I can imagine doing, praying. Perhaps it is the lack of a place of quiet. The disconnect within is disquieting particularly as I claim to be a member of a faith that posits the joining of suffering with the God who saved by suffering Himself.

I am not likely to change overnight and become sanguine with all the little crosses of my days.  But, as I sit here on my terrace, the orange of the sky backdrop to the darkening trees of a night to begin, and the blessed quiet of a work day ended--the buzzing and pounding is at end for the evening at least--I take in a deep cleansing breath and finally thank the Lord, whom I follow so poorly, for the beauty and peace of this moment.

Dennis Prager, Prophet

     I have been listening to Dennis Prager since 1982 when he was a radio broadcaster neophyte. My late father, a long time voracious consumer of late night talk way back to the days of Barry Farber in New York, introduced me to Dennis as "moderator" of a midnight Sunday show called "Religion on the Line".  Every week there would be a Catholic priest, a Rabbi, a Protestant pastor and, often, a representative of another faith or philosophy like Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam. They collegially discussed faith and its impact on daily life in the context of their own theologies, reflecting on the large similarities in values and distinguishing the differences in beliefs.

I am a pretty articulate person, but from the moment I heard Dennis, facilitating and questioning and yes, pontificating based on his broad education and, though he was then young and arguably inexperienced, I found myself wishing I could frame my thoughts as concisely and forcefully as he did. This was a contemporary (we are roughly the same age; as Dennis was starting his work in Los Angeles, like me a New York transplant, I was beginning a West Coast legal career that led to my becoming a prosecutor at the State Bar in 1986, which lasted 25 years) I could admire and emulate.

I looked forward to hearing Dennis before I went to sleep as much as watching the night time soap opera "Dallas". Now there is an irony.

Dennis always speaks something I have felt but could not frame at the moment of my experience. In a world in which I largely feel gaslighted by the public discourse and the demands of political correctness, he confirms that I am not in fact crazy to believe and think as I do on a variety of subjects.

He is passionate without ever becoming angry or nasty with those who disagree with him. That is a rarity with radio personalities of the left or the right. He doesn't demean the one with whom he disagrees. His motto is that he seeks clarity rather than agreement.

It is that clarity of thought in a world of psychological and verbal jumble that, to me, makes Mr. Prayer a prophet.  Today people think of prophets as augurs, like the people in those storefronts reading tarot cards and crystals.  No, this is like the men (alas, yes, they were mostly men, sorry political correct tyrants; there are a few women today who might qualify as prophets thought) of the Pentateuch who simply were able to sift from the forgive the word, "crap", of the societies in which they lived and find objective truth and try to warn the people of that truth in order to save their very souls. The men of old stood in the desert and shouted to the deaf. Dennis sits at a microphone and stands at podiums, and quietly proclaims and responds to questions of the thoughtful and the less than thoughtful, assuring those of us who usually feel at sea in the world that we are not, in fact, in need of a straitjacket, and keeping the truths of God and man and republic in circulation. A voice in the wilderness he is. 

There are many wonderful commentators on talk radio. But I can truthfully say that if Dennis were not on the air I would be bereft and might not even listen any longer. I would have to be satisfied with my reading only, for even my Church (I am a Catholic) is a victim of confusion and the preaching is geared to avoid offense. I haven't heard a single preaching on abortion since my former pastor retired (he has since died). Dogma and practice seem to be completely divergent. Dennis, my Jewish cousin, keeps me on track even theologically. 


It is rare for me to say that I wish I personally knew a "celebrity" (yes, Dennis you are a celebrity, a cerebral celebrity), but I would be honored, delighted to share a meal with Mr. Prager.

I live in California, in Los Angeles.  Dennis helps me to know that I am not alone. And that I should not despair.