Hallu Lulu;
I am passing through LA denial, and I am betting all new arrivals experience LA denial before getting real in LA. I landed in LA in late March and early May is arriving next week. Today commences my seventh weekend, and I have to admit, I feel excited about LA and its multiple options. I could stay in town and attend a huge book festival at UCLA, just off the Sunset Strip. Or I could drive for Temecula or Los Olivos and swizzle wine. Or I could drift and stupendous things are going to happen no matter, no plan needed. You say hello to the guy sitting beside one at the Outback, and he turns out to be a much in demand studio musician trained at UC - Berkeley's school of music, and you stay up later drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and contemplating song writing as a method for completing ones language.
I have made a point of engaging Los Angeles. Sunday, a poetry reading at Hollywood's Good Luck Club with four A list writers and double Jack Daniels. Monday, Ken Burns at the Museum of Television and Radio showing off his new series, The War, to an audience of one hundred people in the business. Tuesday, Rochelle Krich speaking about her mystery novels and Molly Blume, her detective. On Thursday night, after working late, I go to an Italian trattoria for a simple meal and a chianti, and I stay to hear the karaoke. Every woman has pipes, the men dress up in dinner jackets to sing Sinatra tunes and one fellow whipped out his classic harmonica on the instrumental passages of Steamroller Blues. Next door at the Tipperary Pub, a guitarist strums his instrument and sings standards, another studio musician moonlighting, adding all kinds of bells and whistles to his spot on rendition of a torchy classic. It's always in your face: LA is dripping in talent, beauty and money, and even in the San Fernado Valley, the three are dripping all over ones senses.
I have made a point of escaping LA. I discovered an enclavish town on San Fernando's westernmost border, and the town has the Chatsworth Resevoir. I'm thinking at first that it must be like Walled Lake, an exurban retreat where one can go swimming. I arrive on Valley Circle drive to learn that Chatsworth Reservoir has been surrounded by a chain link fence for two decades and the nature preserve between the fence and the rapidly declining water level is open for visitors twice a year. But I discover an exquisite yoga studio, coffee house, art gallery staffed by extraordinarily beautiful women serving smoothies to lovely women who refresh themselves there after session. I also learn from a friend that Chatsworth produces record number of adult feature films, more than any Valley city. On the other hand, 24 is filmed in Chatsworth, too.
And so I depart the valley by driving up Box Canyon road through the Santa Susanna Pass, zooming between the buttes made famous in the Lone Ranger and Zorro, and then I remember the following historical fact. Charles Manson lived on the Spahn Movie Ranch, located on that San Fernando escapeway, the Santa Susanna Pass road.
So I duck into the Simi Valley, climb a mountain to visit Ronnie's Library, and notice that all the president's have lamp post banners on the approach road beside Nixon. Truman and FDR and Johnson hold prominent positions right where tour buses disembark their riders.
I mention this observation to a security guard. He explains to me that Ronnie Reagan's ridge has really strong winds. I pretend to accept this answer. When I pass by the station again, another security agent makes certain I hear the real story. Nixon's banner was torn down by a tour bus driver's side rear view mirror. I wonder why Nixon's doesn't have a bannerless light pole as the museum orders a new supply of Nixon banners? Maybe the museum is experiencing a bit of budget belt tightening. Billy's banner stands between George and George W. and the traffic island, right where a ranch has its imposing gates. I didn't recognize the brand on the gates. Jimmy C's banner faces away from the road; I had to stop my car and get out just to verify it was he.
I ate a beautiful lunch of Salmon at Billy's pad and library in Little Rock, down in the valley of the Little Rock River, so I wanted to have a bite at Ronnie's Country Cafe, up there where the Eagles fly and jets land near the air sock one ridge up. A Hispanic American in a contractor's uniform, with a contractor company patch on his right breast, is mopping in the foyer at 4:02 PM and he stops me and tells me that that Country Cafe is closed. It's official closing time is posted as 4:30 PM.
I saw a luxurious bar being setup outside the cafe doors, out on the patio, near a chunk of spray painted Berlin Wall. I'm sure the pitchers of orange and cranberry juices are going to be iffy by the time people turn up for mixed drinks. So I go to the gift shop to buy a shirt for my dad, and no one working there is over 25 years of age, and they all remind me of college republicans from the eighties. The man manning the admission counter doesn't take his fingers of his Sony Play Station Portable as he answers my question. I decide not to tour the collection. When I visited Billy's library, I could see the bookshelves on the third floor from the sidewalk outside because Bill's place by the old Choctah railroad bridge is made of glass. Ronnie's library had a strong facade of sandstone brick, a building designed to allow private conferences; no one could say who was walking down these corridors, still corridors of power and Republican fund-raising. When I returned to my car, I saw liveried servants popping out of cars, so freshly tuxedoed and so well groomed, I was sure a symphony was making arrival. I asked one of the young men, and he revealed himself as a mere waiter. He didn't know the name of the event, looking at his poopsheet printout. As I got into my car, he asked a woman in a Tuxedo, "Are you here for the ...." and he glared at me, catching me eavesdropping.
I'm not sure who picks out Billy's people for his library guides or the docents at his museum in Hope, Arkansas, but they are sure nice. At Willy Jeff's library, I was greeted at the glass door by a woman in her fifties when I hadn't yet bought a ticket, and I was sure she was going to offer me a place to sit and a lemonade. I almost felt a little gushed over.
Thinking thoughts of comparative Presidential museums, I drove up 101 to Santa Barbara in time to watch darkness falling over the American Riviera, parking my truck at a beach next door to Stearn's Wharf. I had arrived too late to visit the Santa Barbara Cemetary Association, down by the lagoon at the border of Santa Barbara and Montecino. After bunking in a hotel on the edge of town, the only no vacancy sign on the way to the highway and the only room in town under 150 dollars, assisted by a security guard, I found the gravesite of Kenneth Rexroth, the final resting place of one of my favorite poets. When Philip Lamantia, Mike McClure, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Phil Whalen read at the famous 6 Gallery reading in San Francisco October 7, 1955, Rexroth served as master of ceremonies. Asked by a reporter if he considered himself a beat writer, Rexroth quipped, "an entymologist is not a bug". And Rexroth's stone is probably his final riddle. His plot suggests his feet are to the south, pointing toward the Pacific. However, his headstone reads from south to north, suggesting that his feet are to the north. But there is no room for his remains there. The headstones of a couple take up that space. Not only did Ken land a front row seat on a Pacific bluff for eternity, he reminds us of his career of counterculture and anarchy.
But after my moment at Ken's, it was time to return to Los Angeles, where I am enjoying a new shot at prosperity in a town that hasn't issued its judgement upon my life yet. I hanker for the Great Lakes, but I know I'm never going to muse in Michigan upon feminity the way one can here nor wish for starstruckedness with so good a chance of success outside the boundaries of the city of the angels and the angles. And then I think about my wardrobe, my physique and my future possibilities of bachelor lairs and wonder what stories could lie ahead. After all, this town has as many shops for fabricating stories as the Motor City had for building auto parts once. Burbank Boulevard is lined with job shops, as many as Nine Mile in Hazel Park. But the jobs are edited film, recorded voice, composed music. Why not write a new chapter of my life here, instead of a short travelog? My friend how works at the writer's guild tells me stories of scripts selling for one or two million, and I catch that paper version of gold fever. I even consider teeth whitening and maybe therapy and acting classes again, just to raise my soul to that LA pitch.
Best to you, Lulu.
Will
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