our place is an apartment circa 50-60's swedish. looks like a retro IKEA place! missing: shag carpet. BUT: one whole wall is windows, wood ceilings, open floorplan (loft) with those sixties globe lights. we have all of our furniture on an angle so the open floorplan gets really tweeked with the furnishings. we can see the sky and the stars at night laying in bed. los angeles and it's wacky energy is kept at bay by a mountain range. birds get rowdy as the sun rises, crickets as the sun declines.

the energy of this place is interesting. i do not fully understand it, i study it. the mountains and the oaks seem to give off a lot of life-force in the ravine that we are in. i constantly thank the terrain for gifts of beauty-nature-peace. i figure that the least i can do is bless it back. i feel cradled in the hillside, protected from the mass humanity that resides on the other side in the LA basin.

i grew up with space, land, psychological distance between neighbors, nature. i was in my late 20's when i gave that up and moved to la. i have never gotten over the loss of a certain kind of physical distance and the cramped emotional distance that is so cal. this is the first place i have resided in la that feels communal.

when my cat got out and was lost, i started to put up "lost cat" posters. i had people coming up to me, asking me about what happened! i have not lived in a place where anyone would ever go out of their way in such a manner for a loooong time. there is a sense of neighborlyness here. the mountains create borders that make an "us" of our little street that goes up the ravine.

this was a bit pedestrian of an entry, but it is what is going on right now. i am grateful for the place i live in. that feels like a thing to recognize and relish.