As a newcomer to this southernly land I am surprised and amused to live among palm trees. Palm trees don't belong in my city, they belong in tropical resorts, on desert islands, safely away on cheesy TV shows and bad joke cartoons. Palm trees, tall and skinny and hairy, their tuft of fronds at angles and scales alien to the maples and dogwoods of my upbringing, are a signifier of places to visit, to enjoy the sight of, and then the memory of.
Over the last six months, I've started to get used to palm trees as part of the backdrop of my life. I haven't oohed and aahed over the tree a few yards over when silhouetted against the sunset since October. The trees up and down Wilshire are just trees, kind of. And while I never solved the mystery of why the super tall and skinny ones all lean towards the ocean (best guess so far: remember that the Pacific is actually more to the south, not the west, at this point on the coast), I haven't asked anyone for their theory in a while. I'm getting used to them, and by extension, to LA.
Until Sunday when, down along the palisades in the drizzle watching the rain bead up on the windshield with a sleeping baby, a cup of tea, a few brownies, and the erudite conversation of my spouse, I saw those tall spindly palms swaying in the wind against grey skies and was struck by a pop cultural memory of hurricanes, of tropical places facing far less than paradisiacal weather, of local television meteorologists sent out from their comfortable studios to stand in knee high water holding their hats while in the background palms sway and collect blowing debris, signs and sheeting and the detritus of the built environment picked up the forty, sixty feet to land in among the stretched to breaking fronds above, or bounce off and away along the winds.
Yesterday's run destination: Brentwood Country Mart
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: popovers and donuts
lunch: rice and lentils
dinner: "Lakers" chicken stir fry with red cabbage and yellow bell pepper
also brownies
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