I'm a son of LA, born and raised. This city hasn't taught me everything. Hardly. Just all the difference-makers, all the game changers. The important things, you know? Like playing jazz to your plants if they're looking sad. It's such small circumstances sometimes that carry the weight of depth that we've been looking for. They plant me so that these short roots of mine have something to hold onto.
Then that's were suddenly I find myself. Amidst concrete assumptions in the winter's warm LA sun, set sprawled on Sacha's cozy porch on the beach. Spliffed and sipping on Pabst's. Surfed out and lounging with my shades on, old jazzy tunes crooning to the garden of potted plants, to the cacti and the ferns and the herbs, the dozens of them. A leaf here and a leaf there is browning or has been chomped on.
"Maybe it's the caterpillars," I say.
"Maybe..." Sacha's doubtful. "Oh! You know what it might be? They need their jazz!"
"What?"
"Their jazz! I play them jazz music once a week," she says, and in a flash there's a boombox and Sacha's jazzPod and after a minute or so I think she's right. That jazz soothes the soul. It makes the present worth noticing, and I fear it's a thing not noticed enough. Spanks, Sacha.
Thanks. You make LA home to me.
[closing time]
