I love the word solitude. It’s pure Latin of course, as many of the best English words are. A good Latin dictionary will give you a thought provoking array of possibilities to translate the noun solitudo-solitudinis (third declension feminine) ‘a being alone, loneliness, solitariness, solitude, lonely place, desert, wilderness, desolation, want, destitution, deprivation, orphanage, bereavement.’
Los Angeles has been burning again. I returned a week ago from a spell of tranquility and awoke the next morning to hear that the overly dry brush had ignited once more and an uncontained fire of several hundred acres was roaring into life up the road. Schools were closed and the acrid tang of smoke and ash hung heavy in the air.
My daughter’s swimming lesson has changed recently. As she’s now begun stroke introduction and graduated to the big pool she is starting at 4.00pm. The pool is quiet and mostly empty at this time in marked contrast to the later slot we used to take when lessons galore were in full force and splashing and shrieking were the order of the day. The somnolent quiet and rippling blue water have a strangely atmospheric effect and I’ve been finding that it’s surprisingly easy to fall through time and into the aquamarine memories of yesteryear.
We just did that rare thing that parents do occasionally; we took a weekend away to ourselves in celebration of our seventeenth wedding anniversary, abandoning the children to the care of a beloved babysitter. It’s always the onrush of stillness that surprises me at first. Having reached our destination, we both sit and look at one another quizzically; what to do first when there’s nothing that really must be done at all?
It’s been strangely quiet at home today. I rushed in after the morning school run, my mind full of all the domestic tasks I needed to accomplish before I could sit at my desk and put my working hat on. Talking out loud as usual, I stopped in mid sentence; where was the sound of the tail beating happily against the floor or the madly grinning face, beaming in expectation of his morning walkies?
We all noticed it. My daughter stepped outside the apartment door this morning and ran straight back inside asking for her school cardigan. As I sat in the interlude between one school pick up and the next later in the day, I felt the bite of the air for the first time and was suddenly cold in my summery top. Even in California winter approaches it seems, perhaps with more stealth than elsewhere but with no less intent.
I paid my first visit to the Getty Villa last week. It’s one of those quintessential Los Angeles locales that I have meaning to see for a while. For one reason or another, maybe its location- with the intimidating right turn straight off Pacific Coast Highway- maybe the simple fear of disappointment, I’d avoided it for longer than I should have. The crowds can be overwhelming during the busiest periods and so I booked my entrance for the earliest slot of the morning. As I walked from the car park to the museum entrance I was transported into another world.
It was a weekend full of sunshine. On Saturday morning I made the glorious drive up to Malibu along Pacific Coast Highway to meet my son while my husband competed in his first triathlon at Zuma Beach. The surfers were out in force, bobbing up and down in their black wetsuits on their boards atop the rolling waves. For a moment or two, as the sun struck the water with glistening silvery force, you could almost believe you were voyaging through paradise.
My husband and I went out a couple of nights ago; the first time we’d had the space to venture forth in a while. We left our daughter turtle watching with her babysitter in Douglas Park while our son, now fully in the swing of high school life, took a cab to Century City mall to spend the evening with friends.
We sat on the terrace yesterday evening by the swimming pool long after night had fallen and the silhouettes of the tall trees in the distance could be seen in inky black definition against the dark sky. There was a definite chill creeping in on the air; a reminder that the season of autumn with its cooler cast of characters waits in the wings and a signal that, all too soon, our summer idyll will draw to a close for this year.
We were driving along a French country lane in the early evening yesterday. The dappled sunlight filtered through the canopy of greenery overhead forming magical flickering patterns in the air. I was put in mind of the fairy sprites in a Midsummer Night’s Dream and their mischievous activity which results in so much hilarious chaos.
Sitting on a train heading away from London, my thoughts move with the rhythm of the rails and images from the past week flash before my eyes. I am never prepared for the experience of being back in this city; somehow it always takes hold of my heart and teaches me something new, even when I think that I have nothing left to learn.
