I, star, luminaries light up June gloom

Driving into Los Angeles, I thought of my own self-positioning as private emissary here on the west coast of what I wasn’t quite sure. Describe my mission in these parts. And, if I didn’t have one, what business did I have here anyway?

Watching the fog crawl early on over the beaches of Dana Point, installing itself easily on the coast, a creature breathing heavy moist breaths, I came to understand what everyone called June Gloom. Caused by the Catalina Eddy, fog with the occasional drizzle hangs out on the coast, before the sun, later on in the afternoon, dissolves it all.

I pulled out of Megan’s development once again under police escort – an Orange County mounted with full-on mirrored shades keeping a Cyclopean eye on me until I made the turn into unsurveilled existence onto the interstate.

Keep it moving, buddy.

I thought, as that artery of Southern California clogged with lipids in the form of SUVs and semis to a near heart attack stand-still (traffic began – that language a stretch but I kinda like it, if only because everyone is so fit and beautiful in Southern California) of a friend, who suggested that perhaps my east coast attitude of slash and burn, confrontation and wariness, manifested these situations for myself – the guy in Saint Paul making it clear I was not welcome, the trucker who flicked me off, the Canadian authorities, even cops seeming to smell me whenever I reached the neighborhood. I’ll include an excerpt:

Something funny I noticed about your blog… did you pack up some of that East Coast hostility in your bags?  There’s a lot of combative subtextual exchange for a guy who’s just rattling around cross-country.  I think as a person moves westward the mentality gets a little less combative.  A little more naive (probably a little more bland, more commercialized, more generic in this regard — but still, a type of naivete prevails).  And in those folks who are not naive to threat, the mentality is at least a little more deliberately zen.  Why not make the more positive assumption: this guy’s trying to be helpful to someone who appears lost… that trucker might just be tired and not aware he’s cutting someone off… that teenager — well, okay.  But that’s a teenager.  Not much to do about that but wait for them to grow out of it, and laugh about what little bitches we probably ALL were when we were teenagers. I guess I’m just wondering — are you itching for a fight?

I rolled this over in my mind. Was I itching for a fight?

I vowed to do my best to empty my bags of East Coast hostility. Here in California I would be more, well, California.

The following day my registration would be null and void, so I was happy to try anything.

La-La Land’s June Gloom was general in Santa Monica – but we quickly rose out of what early L.A. folks call the “high fog” as we drove the winding road into Topenga Canyon. Indeed, seemingly at the end of the road system, sat Truth Eye and Aradhana’s home, perched near the ridge of the canyon, with a view south to the neighboring saddle. Dog hadn’t eaten, and took his sustenance with great joy.

When I first arrived in California, at the age of 19, I took a Greyhound from Philadelphia to San Diego, where I crashed out late that night at a friend’s house in Encinitas. The next morning I woke, wandered into the kitchen, and watched a gorgeous blond woman, naked,  bounce gently on a diving board before diving in, to enormous effect on young Brendan. Such was my introduction to the state.

Almost fifteen years later, I walked into Truth Eye and Aradhana’s house to two gorgeous ladies – a brunette and a blond – engaged in a belly dancing lesson. I tell you – the state is something else.

Together Truth Eye and Aradhana, married, constitute “I, Star.” They just dropped a stunning album, which I would encourage everyone to check out, and “Like”on Facebook.

I got the tour of the compound – their extensive garden, Aradhana’s chocolate factory, their music studio. We had a fine dinner, punctuated by a glass of wine being spilled on a white dress – a gesture which always adds spice to the meal. Aradhana fed us her exquisite raw chocolate for dessert, bites that send your head spinning.

The next morning we headed down to perhaps the most well-known single farmer’s market in the country – the Santa Monica market. I bought an avocado which had the texture of a semi-hard cheese dipped in a light oil. T checked in with his usual homies, and we picked up some raw milk and butter and kefir. Back at the ranch I helped him build a cage for his plants – rats at night and squirrels during the day making short work of the plants. We broke out the mics and cords hooked up and played music, as T & A warmed up for the evening’s concert. They indulged me by doing an iteration of Springsteen’s Youngstown – not exactly folk-hop, but fun.

That evening I,Star’s former band, the Luminaries, set up at Zanzibar in Santa Monica for their album release party. I helped set up A’s table for the sale of raw chocolate, then sat back to witness the most beautiful hippies I have ever experienced file through the door – linen and tans and cell phones and leather holsters. Intimidatingly gorgeous. I had begun to notice that peculiarly LA look – that one glance that takes in reams of information in a second flat – objectification of the highest magnitude, and it was kind of fun. I mean, what you were was what you were. Why wait, as one does in San Francisco, for them to say something before passing judgement ?

T & A performed with the Luminaries for their final song. I stood by as Aradhana made folks very happy selling raw chocolate. I mean, the looks on their faces when they bit into this stuff – I should have taken a series of photos, but it was dark, and, to be honest, the pics would have had a pornographic element due to the facial expressions inappropriate for the young readers.

Speaking of which, Dog gave T some special affection in a photo – he only extends this courtesy to those he truly loves.

We returned that eve to a cloud of fog crawling with the cold air through the canyon. I watched sleepily its progress, raw sheep’s wool, falling obliquely against the streetlights. The time had come for the journey northward. Yes, everyone who spoke about June Gloom was right : mist general over Southern California. It dropped on every part of Route 1, on the treeless hills, crawling softly into Topenga Canyon and, farther westward, softly crawling into the dark mutinous Santa Monica waves. It was crawling, too, upon every part of the freeway on the hill where those 44 pobladores lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked Ls and Os of the HOLLYWOOD SIGN, on the spears of the cell phone radio towers, on the barren prickly pear thorns pointing the way to Las Vegas. My soul swooned slowly as I heard the fog crawling faintly through the universe and faintly crawling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.