Feet on the ground find me in the Hollywood hills. The trips these sneakers take me are baffling and I am good with it.
I am staying with a dear friend in Little Armenia, a sub-cultural cluster within greater Los Angeles. I am here from Maine, touching down to teach anatomy and injury prevention to a group of future yoga teachers in South LA before I head further south to lead a yoga retreat in Mexico.
“My grandfather planted this tree in 1954,” offers a neighborhood gentlemen who let me stand on his stucco wall and lean into his tree.
“My grandfather planted this tree in 1954,” offers a neighborhood gentlemen who let me stand on his stucco wall and lean into his tree.
Even the City of Angels, in love with the automobile, cannot deny nature’s beauty.
I discovered a hiking trail as I climbed up the neighborhood streets, past compounds of castle~like homes with BMW’s in driveways and no people in sight. I shouted out, “Hey, where are you? How come you’re not outside?”
I began to see others from all walks of life with eyes bright and smiles beginning. Faces soft. Not engaged with phones. Just being in the sun with the scrub brush, sage, cactus, strange birds. We were all heading towards the Observatory that takes in the sky, the sun the city below. 
They were in awe. Or was it me? Either way, it was magical.
Flint, Michigan, Syria, Trump, Fracking, climate change goes away for a moment and there is spaciousness and expansiveness that cannot be denied. It seemed as though the humans that traveled up the mountain got a break from the issues running and just drank it up, gulping the gaze from this life we get to walk and awaken through. Or was it just me?
The perspectives went beyond the city scape the infamous sign. We were invited to reach beyond the immediate to the depths that science and mystery point to, where we fit in the universe of things.
Watch…as the earth, our home, spins and turns in her orbit around the sun and seasons. Watch a year in the life pass by in a moment and a month pass in the phases of the moon.
“Galleo’s head was on the block. His crime was looking up the truth.” Indigo Girls
Just a hunch, but maybe things are not as (bad as) they seem. Maybe the obvious is not all that obvious. Maybe the clearer the mirror, the cleaner the world view and clear action becomes a happening, an event, aligned and flowing. Maybe benevolence rules and consciousness is rising.
Feel more than satisfied, I head back down the hills to Little Armenia. I see a lemon at my feet. I bow and savor the tart ice water pulling me to appreciation.
