"The Deserted Garden"

If I could discover one apparently lost painting (but surely it has to be on someone's wall, somewhere?) it would undoubtedly be Millais' The Deserted Garden.  But failing that, I'll just walk around my own, while I still can ...

The roses are looking decidedly spotted (I did some deadheading, nonetheless);

the nigella and poppy seedheads are suitably dessicated (I went to gather some seeds, intending to make an illegal import, but found that the poppy ones, at least, were already dispersed - I hope they come up and flourish all over the place next year - or at least in whatever corners of the garden may be left by then).

In other words, all's looking suitably desolate - if one was constructing a suitable setting for a movie, it would be like this.  Or one could call on Swinburne's "A Forsaken Garden"  "The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels / One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.... And or ever the garden's last petals were shed" and so on.  Looking this up to quote it was a big mistake, of course - it's much too melancholic a read, even if it's wildly overwrought (and strangely full of negative constructions).  

 

The garage! and variegated views

For those of you who knew Ray's garage - even only in photographs - this is surely a startling sight.  No, I didn't clear every last old miscellaneous piece of wood, every rusting screw, and every might-possibly-be-useful-one-day dismantled electric plug myself: mig ht I recommend a firm called Clearabee, who were efficient and cheerful and helpful; took the remaining power tools off to new homes; took away, too, one elderly bed and mattress (revealing dessicated cat turds, etc, on the carpet below), and another no longer functional mattress ... so this was all a huge relief.  But that space!  Now, just to find how to get rid of paint cans that still have liquid in them; flammable fuels, etc, which (and I knew this) they couldn't take.

For my part, as well as more, yet more, and more again dealing with various forms of things that haven't departed to LA, I took a particularly loathsome painting that my father bought a while back to an auction house in West Norwood (so loathsome that Tom Edwards, at Abbott and Holder, where Ray bought it from the previous owner, couldn't stand it either - a fanciful harlequin guitar player in a generic idyllic landscape serenading three scantily clad young women - by Claude Harrison - it is even called "Autumn Dollies."  The South London scenery from the train was rather good ...

Without any mattress to sleep on, I've now decamped to a nearby hotel, off Wimbledon Common;

So one last wake-up view, from this morning, showing the rewilded meadow;

and this is just to prove that I'm staying (mostly) cheerful!

 

Bare walls (and mousers)

So ... the Official Movers came, and everything that is going to the US disappeared off on a truck - first to Bristol, where it will be put on a pallet and wrapped in clingfilm and then taken to Portishead and from there shipped off to LA.  And then?  Who knows when it will arrive ... I was up very very early, doing all those last-minute tasks like emptying the coal from the brass coal scuttle (who knows when that was last used?).

Which leaves me with, still, some imponderables, and the handful of things that I hadn't seen that the men had left behind - very little, because they were conscientious and efficient - and all the things that need rehoming, like a bag of useful fabrics to a crafting project, and so on.  My angry moment today came early, when I went to find the vintage sewing machine in the garage - kept in a handsome mahogany box - and found that the box was empty.  I guess my father sold it at the same time that, evidently, he sold my mother and grandmother's fountain pens - as ever, if he didn't want to keep something, off it went, at least for a while ... (leaving me with all the things in the garage - the old screws, the pieces of wood, the clock springs - that might "come in useful" sometime.  And so they might, but probably not.  Off they go, tomorrow, into a Clearabee truck).

I thought that the house would be too sad and empty to stay in for much longer, and without much furniture, so this is my last night here (and it's the last night that I'll have useful things like pillows and sheets, which plays a role ...).  I'll just be here in the day times, doing yet more carrying of books to Oxfam, etc. But even without the paintings and the prints and without very much furniture, I'm surprised and a bit disconcerted how much it is still itself - I guess that would be, as much as anything, its light, the shapes of its rooms, the sounds.  You can't export the creak on the stairs.

The best bit of the day?  The neighbors' cats, Tom and Sam, mousing in the garden.  They love the wilderness.

And now - as one does, on one's last night in a home one's known for 62 years, to - well, no, not raise a glass, but teach (via Zoom).  Because Los Angeles is 8 hours behind us, and my graduate class starts at 2 p.m./10 p.m. here...

 

suitcase (and roses)

It's got to the very final stages of what to keep, and what to let go (but one thing that I'm not letting go of is the tradition of flowers from the garden on the windowsill).  The hardest thing today was my father's old khaki green suitcase, which dates back to 1940 (the date of manufacture is actually there inside) - and there's a very evocative multiply altered change of address label inside the lid.  I remember the suitcase well - it traveled around with us a good deal, and, evidently, was a Work Suitcase for Ray, until he turned to supposedly posher and much nastier ones.  So here's a label for the Athenee Palace, where he spent a lot of time in 1970, working on the contractual side of the hydro-electric dam that the Romanians were building with the UK firm that he worked for (and that they were trying to pay for, unsuccessfully, in tomatoes).  They were a corrupt bunch - I remember my father taking my mother and myself to a dinner at the Savoy (the Baked Alaska! That's what I truly remember!) to help entertain some visiting government negotiators - a dinner during which my mother had the most peculiar expression on her face.  Afterwards, she revealed that the government official, who I think was called Greceanu (she and I subsequently referred to him as Letchy Gretchy) had his hand on her thigh throughout the dinner.  Alas, just a few years ago, Ray was talking to a Romanian Big Issue seller outside Waitrose in New Malden, and found that all the work on the dam has by now been jeopardized by people stealing the metal piping.

And then there were other labels - the suitcase was evidently once shipped by - probably the GNR - to Wimbledon from ... ? Carlisle, for 2/6d, 

on some occasion, Ray evidently and improbably traveled 1st class.

So normally I'd have brought this along.   BUT - having been brought down from the loft, it was horribly evident that all its leather straps and corners are decaying like light and fragile rust, leaving large brown stains on anything they touch.  Not even I can think it's a good idea to hang onto this one.

 

"Time Passes"

Of course that's a To the Lighthouse reference - to that whole central impersonal section.

"So with the house empty and the doors locked and the mattresses rolled round, those stray airs, advance guards of great armies, blustered in, brushed bare boards, nibbled and fanned, met nothing in bedroom or drawing-room that wholly resisted them but only hangings that flapped, wood that creaked, the bare legs of tables, saucepans and china already furred, tarnished, cracked. What people had shed and left — a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes — those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite. [...]"

I don't recollect Woolf writing about ivy here, but if she were to have done - rather than the less green, and definitely less vegetative light - it surely would have crept round the doorframe and entered, just like this.

This is not unique to a more-or-less, or soon-to-be abandoned house: my parents used to like the inside/outside effect that the ivy created - but how, it seems like a rapid invasion of the wild.

 

railings

They are coming along!  I'll be gone for a week, and I have every expectation that this will be finished (and inspected for compliance to building code?) by the time I'm back.  Workers busily making up for time lost to pouring rain earlier in the week ...

 

L. A. polleria

A particularly L.A. street corner - the poultry store; the dentist billboard; the impressive Public Storage building in the background ... I have long loved this rooster, but it was only today, when we were stuck in traffic in front of it, that I fully took on board that there's a plaster duck and a plaster rabbit on that rooftop, too. 

 

holes

It's football time again, and campus is alive with - well, with canopies.  With holes in them! And with students!  Everywhere!  I feel somewhat disappointed that I won't be able to watch any of USC's first game, since I'll be somewhere in the air - heading back to deal with the final throes of packing and moving and and and.  And I guess that I'm grateful for Zoom, which will allow me to teach/go to meetings (albeit at strange hours) just as if I were on campus ... There ought to be some kind of metaphor to be found in that string of gruyère-like holes, but I haven't hit upon it yet.

 

department meeting

I have no idea whatsoever why there are two fancy Dornsife water bottles on the window sill of the Art History seminar room, where we have our department meetings - and by this point in a long long day (with more yet to do), I'm past caring.  I did succeed, however, in getting all but one member of the department to attend in person - by the highly passive-aggressive means of deliberately not putting a Zoom link on the agenda.  If you're sick, or have family problems, or are out of town - fair enough.  Otherwise, I want to see everyone in person, and have something resembling a community of live people.  So there.  Rant over.

Also - it's not my 43rd year.  It's my 44th.  I can't count.

 

first day back

I would be completely fibbing if I said I didn't feel excited at the start of the new academic year - I always do, and it helps when one's campus is looking at its best.  It's flat out, of course - today involved running a session for new and old TAs - and the people teaching with TAs - that I hadn't entirely comprehended that (as the person teaching the Practicum for new TAs) I was running.  But - hey, after all these years, I can invent almost anything on the spot.

All these years! - this is my 43rd in a full time university teaching position, and that's not counting the teaching I did (with no Practicum, and, in those days, not even books on the topic) as a grad student.  That seems like a long time - and it's even more shocking to think how one was thrown into the deep end very young. I was only three and a half years out from being an undergrad, no PhD in sight, and I'd spent a lot of those years in archives in Italy or London or Washington DC, or working for the Labour Party, or in bars - the last two of which, of course, prepare one quite well for extemporaneous seminars.  

I did, of course, buy a new notebook for the class.  I can't imagine that I'll ever forego that ritualistic pleasure, even if we do have computers, these days ...

 

the day after

Retrospectively, it was a big mistake using my best hiking boots for the mud-based engineering works: they are going to take much more cleaning than if I'd used, say, my big Hunter wellies, or even a rather fetching shorter pair of rubber boots with spots on them.  However, the urgency of yesterday morning was such that I grabbed pretty much whatever was at hand (or, rather, foot).

It poured quite a lot more during the night - prefaced by the alarm signal going off at 2.51 a.m., which jolted me out of some very peaceful dreams (about choosing italic pen nibs for fountain pens.  Evidently that's what my unconscious entertains itself with in the middle of the night).  But nothing came into the garage, and by this morning all the clouds were drifting away.  Schools were out - or rather, shifted on line - for the day, so although I had to cross town to the dentist I was there in double-quick, no traffic time.  Really, the whole thing was no more disruptive (here, that is, in LA - plenty of flooding elsewhere) than one's average heavy winter storm, largely because there was almost no wind.  I think we - that's a city-citizen "we" - were very lucky.

 

Hurriquake day

The view from our house, this evening - it is very wet out there.  From time to time, our phone beep loudly with alarm signals, terrifying the cats - these are Flash Flood warnings, which means that another downpour is about to start.  There has, however - as yet (it's nearly 8.30 p.m.) been no wind.  And then, at 2.41 p.m. the Beep Beep Beep was, in fact, an earthquake warning, which was mildly terrifying, but having been trained in these things at USC - yes, seemingly earthquake drills do work - I hurled myself onto the floor and under a table and hung on - only by that time, the earthquake had happened, quite a bit further north, and I didn't feel a thing.  With one thing and another, it's not been easy to concentrate.

And you're wondering about the construction, and the new deck?  Thank goodness it's as far along as it is ... 

 

I had to go out there, and in the ever thickening and deepening mud dig a little acequia to divert the water away from the house, and reinforce it with bits of whatever I could find - this slopes towards a hole at the edge of the deck, and disappears after that (I was not stumbling further through the mud to find out its actual route).  While I was quite proud of this engineering feat, it does seem to me that it's probably not a long-term solution for this part of the yard ...

Another few hours rain to go - I'll head outside one more time to sweep away water from in front of the garage ...

 

at the gas station

 

We thought we'd better fill up with gas - not entirely sure what aspect of the oncoming Tropical Storm might necessitate jumping in the car and driving off, but if we need to, it would be more than maddening to find that all the eletrically-powered pumps were out of order, and that we were running low ... At the moment - nearly 9 p.m. - the air is dull and grey and slightly heavy, and there isn't even a breath of wind.  Actually, it's rather like New Jersey.  The only thing that's unusual is the number of Great Horned Owls hooting out at the back of the house.

This is the Russian Orthodox Church of the Holy Transfiguration - dating back to the late 1930s - looming over the gas station.  But the slight surrealism of it was completely surpassed by the scene that unfolded while we were there.  Two separate white cars came down Western, each driven by a woman in - maybe their early 20s? - both wearing bright orange tank tops; one yelling obscenities at the other.  Car # 2 comes into the gas station, pulls up at the pump parallel with ours, and the young woman picks up a huge meth pipe, and strikes a match to ... well, at this point we left, fairly speedily, since this didn't seem like the safest thing for her to be doing in that particular location ...

really???

The first sign of the 2024 campaign season has appeared in our neighborhood, and it is, shall we say, a surprising (and depressing) one.  With any luck, the oncoming storm will wash it away ... in the meanwhile, and probably afterwards, I'm giving this house a wide berth - since the only conceivable reason for supporting this candidate would be if you were an anti-vaxer, who knows what one could catch from its inhabitants ...?

 

ghostbusting

It was tempting to think, this morning, that our new-ish neighbors might be having some problems ... their Normandy-style hunting lodge (I'm using, of course, realtor language) could have any number of ghosts, one might think.  More specifically, although it was built for Leona P. Wood, an artist and a founding director of the L.A. Children's Hospital - and was probably designed by Paul Williams, the noted Black architect - it was then lived in by Paul DeGaston, the abortionist (practicing under the name C. J. Morris) who was a (rather far-fetched) suspect in the Black Dahlia murder case in 1947.  The house would be a very good candidate for exorcism ...

But given that the new owner is Fred A---en [not wanting to make him too Googlable], of Portlandia, SNL and most recently Wednesday fame, he's probably throwing a party (let's hope the entire cast of Wednesday turn up in costume), since Ghostbusters of LA seem to put on Events in aid of charity, presumably in places just like this house, with its timbered minstrels' gallery, etc.  Perhaps he'll invite the neighbors?  I do love fancy dress ...

 

local tropical

... where Lucile crosses Sunset: one of my favorite walls for murals, over the years, with a changing array of images: this large bird and tropical foliage is my favorite for a while. 

 

Network

At The Hammer, "The Network," by Chiharu Shiota - which is a vast construction of red string, making one feel as though one's inside a web of veins.  Her work is deliberately both architectural and ephemeral and site-specific; most of these huge webs are use the same blood-colored material, though occasionally it's white, occasionally a greyish-black. Sometimes she suspends sheets of paper in it that seem to be fluttering or floating - I wish I'd seen her 2021 installation at the big glasshouse at Kew Gardens.  Very many of them reference the body/ flesh/meat - in a transparent, and disembodied way - though it's not especially helpful to be told in the wall panel that in each of her works "the artist takes up a deeply personal, often existential question or concern, which becomes the contemplative motor for the planning and enacting of the project."  I guess since this is called "The Network," then she's meditating on connectivity? I'm sure I'll have no problem into turning it into a metaphor, soon enough ...

 

the deck makes progress

It's getting there.  The major construction work is complete; the wood deck is laid - it was great to come back to LA and see it for real, as opposed to the grainy views that one gets on security cameras.  The railings ... well, half of them have arrived.  The other half seem, frustratingly, to be lost, somewhere between here and Arizona.  And then there will be plants, and so on, to come in the fall ... spreading out where I'm standing to take this.  It would, of course, be helpful if probate would come through for my father's estate ... (maybe October? maybe early November?) ... to help fund what's turned into a crazily ambitious project, but it is a great relief not to have a back yard that was creeping slowly (or perhaps not so slowly) downhill every time it rained, and that in an earthquake would surely have ended up in the hot tub of the house below us.  And no, we are not getting a hot tub.  Mosquitoes.   

 

other people's dogs (Sunday edition)

Lunch was just like spending time with a canine version of Gramsci - throw, fetch; throw, fetch; throw ... I should say that I am not responsible for the ball in the pool: Emiliano was off in hot pursuit of another one ...

 

the sort-of traditional first morning back in LA walk

The Silver Lake silver lake is still where I left it - if a bit more algae-full.  And it was a very hazy morning - no sense of the mountains in the background.  But it was good to walk along it, and see a different assortment of dogs and early morning walkers from Eldorado (much more variety, but much less likely to stop and talk), and to puzzle on what looks to be yet another bout of egg throwing.  Egg throwing in Silver Lake seems (a quick Google tells me) to be an unsolved mystery going back to at least 2019, when some people were going around throwing them out of a white hatchback: in this case, the target seems to be the low concrete wall (not visible here) at the side of the path along the reservoir.  But why?

 

two aspects of La Posada

First - Grams on top of the bookcases (he had to get on top of everything).  And then, a gardener at work in their Pollinator Garden - on a humid and post-monsoon rain morning.

Back! in LA - this half of the drive is always a long one - but we're here.

 

on the road ...

or ... where's the Churu?  Don't we get Churu for being Good in the Car?  We were in two separate cars - today they rode with Alice; tomorrow me ... sharing the responsibility.  And this is the first night we're trying to sleep with them here at La Posada without putting Gramsci in a large man-hut, so we will see.  Currently, he's on top of a bookcase, and Moth on a dresser. Keep your fingers crossed.

 

last of our summer nights

... outside our house, and from our driveway: tomorrow we drive away back to LA.  Alas.  

But we did raise a glass or two this evening to the house itself - it's more or less twenty years to the day since I bought it, and it's been the best investment - in the sense of the pleasure that it's given me - that I've ever made.  The views and skies make it special, for a start, and although on paper it's very modest inside if one's going by measurements alone, in practice it always, and totally, feels like home

 

rainy spa

It rained.  It really rained.  And there was a huge thunderstorm, which decidedly interrupted our end-of-the-summer trip to Ten Thousand Waves - because the lightning was so close that we were called out of the soaking hot bath via the intercom (electric storms and water don't mix all that well) and had to shelter in the sauna structure until it was safe to emerge again.  This wasn't quite the relaxing time that we'd planned.  All the same, dinner at Izanami - attached to 10,000 Waves - was spectacular, and consolidated our belief that this is the best food in Santa Fe, and the sunflowers were luminous when we emerged.

 

Dusty

The cats may not forgive us - we have come home from a dinner party smelling of ... dog.  This is Dusty, a very dear canine, who is some kind of not-entirely-identifiable Doodle, and never stays still long enough to have her portrait taken.  But at least this gives you an excellent idea of her nose.

 

morning clouds

This is what I woke up to this morning - then the day became hot and windy (with some dark smoke on the horizon which was a plastic recycling facility in south east Albuquerque combusting in unpleasantly spectacular fashion).  But it was not only floatingly golden, but one could, just, with a bit of optimism, think that fall might be on the way.

 

farmers market

This Weimeraner might be one of the favorite photos I've taken this summer .... waiting very hopefully for a treat (maybe a piece of lavender donut?) at the indoor cafe at the market (which serves, incidentally, should you be wondering, very good coffee as well as donuts).  This will probably be my last market trip of the summer - it's always tough to be leaving just as the produce is getting more plentiful.  I'd been wondering, though, what had happened to Romero Farms, from Dixon - Matt Romero is usually roasting chile by this time of the summer, and their produce is - was - always great.  But a very recent post on the Santa Fe Foodies facebook page suggests that he's moved, or is moving, over to cannabis farming.  I hope this isn't true ... I feel like that dog, looking longingly, hopefully, but probably in vain for his freshly roaster green chile.