Los Angeles Mélange
(with backup by Russell Crowe,
Raymond Chandler
and Joan Didion)
By Sandra Linville-Thomas

“I’d move to Los Angeles
if New Zealand and Australia were swallowed
up by a tidal wave,
if there was
bubonic plague in England and
if the continent of Africa disappeared
from some Martian attack.”
attributed to Russell Crowe, the actor


Maybe he said it.
A lot of people think that way.
A lot of people don’t.

After all, thousands and thousands move there every year.
And people they leave behind wonder why.

People move out there and buy 3 surfboards.

L.A. is at the edge of the U.S. and it has
a really big ocean that people can ride.
Probably all that needs to be said

about Los Angeles, the city of angels, la-la land,
the valley of smoke (as the Chumash used to say)

But you could say more
about a girl
who first saw the L.A. lights
while driving on the 405, after emerging from a dense fog
that started in San Diego.

First, relief that there was indeed a there there
and that she was
not
going to be the person that everyone yells at
and tells to go home
and throws popcorn at
in the movie theater.

The girl driving alone on a freeway,
not knowing where she was really going.
With fog conveniently placed for someone with a chainsaw to jump out
in front of a slow car.

(She thought of her L.A. entrance later
when she was
on a movie set with machines
filling the air with just that same fog, and
surrounded by people with werewolf teeth and hair, being lit on fire.)

But the lights were just the beginning
because she wasn’t really stopping
in Los Angeles, but driving to the San Fernando Valley,
actually Tarzana

A place where a man named Charlie Tuna was honorary mayor.
The same Charlie Tuna who started his L.A. radio career
at 6 a.m. just as the San Fernando Valley earthquake hit.

L.A. names earthquakes. To keep them straight.
The Northridge earthquake
The Whittier Narrows earthquake (it was that one that she started taking
another look at this thing called living in L.A., while watching TV with her
10-month-old daughter in her lap) and
the Big One, which hasn’t made an appearance yet
(genuflect, sign of the cross,
knock on wood, cross your fingers)

and the fires
the Cedar Fire, Laguna Fire, Old Fire, Esperanza Fire, Santiago Canyon Fire of 1889, Witch Fire (and the other fires in Escondido, Malibu, Rainbow, San Marcos, Carlsbad, Rancho Bernardo, Poway). You get the idea.

I mean you have to love a city in the middle
of the Pacific Ring of Fire
that builds its houses over a labyrinth of active seismic faults,
offers a dry desert landscape and imports its water from 200 miles away
(the Pacific is good for surfing but not so good for drinking because it is an ocean after all)—with chaparral-ignited brush fires that bring mud slides after the monsoons

What it didn’t have was snow. And that’s all she asked for.
Well there was snow but it was in the mountains and
you had to drive to it (which people did in their flip-flops and shorts,
only to be bushwhacked by the cold.)

No snow and cold was enough.

And the people.

And lots of other smaller pleasures, but that can be told later because after all, the excitement and drama is in the conflict, that’s where the story always is.
Not in the hikes in Will Rogers park
(although you do have to watch out for mountain lions and swarming bees)
or in the smell of bougainvillea while driving down Sunset Blvd (warning: if you get pricked by it, get treatment before it spreads the infection through your body.)

She learned to embrace the Santa Ana winds because they signaled the
changing of the seasons like the falling leaves further east.

Even though her skin felt like it had been dropped off at a bad dry cleaners
and came back too small for her body. It also felt electric like something was always about to happen; like there was always a story in L.A.

And now Raymond Chandler and Joan Didion sing backup:
“anything can happen
meek
little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and
study their husband’s necks.”

“the wind shows us how close to the edge we are.”

Memory: a “rope let down from heaven to draw one up
from the abyss of unbeing.”—Marcel Proust

My Grandfather Will Fight You
by Sandra Linville-Thomas

He sometimes shoots at the moon
with a slingshot,
angry,
that when he looks in the mirror his face
sometimes
surprises him.

He sculpts shadows
from fragile moments in time;
even as each neuron
digs in,
sits in stasis,
isolated,
never touching the other,
too sapped to shake hands.

My grandfather is a fighter
and slogs through this muddy vapor
looking for glittering shards,
and tries to tap into some secret connection
hidden away from the pitted and pocked tundra,
in protective custody, watched over by a primal
untouchable will.

Images
Smells
Sounds sent out like
Morse code.
a passing train
whistling wind
warm beer and napalm
the taste of tear gas
laughing babies caught at the end of a slide
picket lines and picket fences
fields of sunflowers, embraces and leave-takings; first,
second and third kisses

“Not even sure if they’re mine, these memories,” he says to me.
“But I will hang on to them with all I’ve got.”

Are they part of a collective memory from hundreds and even
thousands of years, sloughed off by the mitochondria fragmentation?
Small sparks of rememberings
flinging about his faltering brain as
the fireflies
fling themselves about the garden
while we walk quietly together?

He stops, looks down at his hand in surprise
to find a tomato, the red of it, counterpoint to his
white papery skin.
Feeling its heft, he strokes the contours and smiles.

My grandmother joins us.
“Let’s sit down and have some tea,” she says.

My local library is offering a poem a day during Poetry Month. They are featuring local writers
so you make discover a new voice. Take a look. Happy Poetry Month!

Keep April interesting, and write a poem each day of April. If you’re posting them on your blog or website, add it to NaPoWriMo.

What is NaPoWriMo?

It is an annual project in which participating poets attempt to write a poem a day for the month
of April.

According to the NaPoWriMo website, it was founded in 2003, when poet Maureen Thorson decided to take up the challenge (modeled after NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month), and challenged other poets to join her. Since then, the number of participants has gotten larger every year, and many writers’ organizations, local, national and even international, organize NaPoWriMo activities.

Need more information? See the Wikipedia entry for NaPoWriMo!

Go ahead and keep it cool. Feel free to post here.

Getting Ready for National Poetry Month

 

My plan is to publish an original poem each day of April. They will all be first drafts most likely so there is absolutely no guarantee of any quality. I’m not sure I can even do it, but it’s worth a try.

For more information about April’s National Poetry Month, take a look at the Academy of Poets page.

If you live in Los Angeles, here are some ideas to celebrate.

More ways to celebrate at Angell House Press.

If you’d like to read a limerick each day, visit Mad Kane’s Humor Blog during April.

Juicy Journaling with Sark

To get a jumpstart on your journal writing, check out all that is available from Sark. Juicy Journaling it is.

Forsythia
flocked
in snow?
It’s almost April
after all.
But there’s still mint
growing in a pot
in the kitchen window.
I clip a bit and release
that pungent
smell while
watching the red cardinal
eat the last of the bird seed.
Tomorrow I will refill the feeder.
But now, I need to muddle mint
and add crushed ice
and everything else
to a glass.
It’s time for a mojito.
What else is there to do?