jacarandas

I jumped out of bed at 6 am the other morning, alarmed by the roar of helicopters circling overhead like apocalypse now. This sort of activity is usually used to flush out dangerous criminals hiding in the streets of Los Angeles. I locked my bedroom window.

Later, while preparing my lunch & listening to Dr. Laura on AM radio, the program was interrupted with breaking news: my notorious neighbor, Paris Hilton, was being picked up and brought back to jail.

Breaking news!

Poor Paris. And poor me having to listen to ear-shattering helicopters all morning & miss my Dr. Laura. I’m not really interested in Ms. Hilton’s fascinating celebrity life, yet these days there’s no way to avoid her drama unless I turn off the radio & lock myself up in a closet.

Lord knows I’ve got drama enough of my own. Last week, while trying to install a password on my computer I got locked out of the whole system & could not find my way back. Kinda like Paris in jail, in a way.

None of my data was accessible to me. It was as though my life had ended. Luckily I have a lap top to go searching the internet for help. The feelings I experienced during the 24 hours until I found a geek on craigslist, a hacker actually, who came to the house & cracked the code, were of such utter despair I had to stop and ask myself, what’s going on here?

In the middle of all this the remote for my TV stopped working & I started to cry. How did I ever live without a computer & internet or before remote TV controls? I felt my blood running cold in my veins, my hands trembled, the air in my apartment became thin; I was a wreck.

Then I remembered my motto: when all else fails, hit the road. And so, dazed & bewildered, I ventured out into the street and looked around.

What a beautiful thing is a jacaranda tree. Lilac colored flowers, on trees with very little greenery, so that the blossoms stand out against the brown branches, and the blue sky fills the spaces between the branches. My street is lined with jacarandas; West Hollywood is studded with them like amethysts and emeralds on a blue silk gown. The jasmine hedges perfume the air & birds twitter as they flit from tree to tree.