Good Evening, my Angel,
Did you see the Moon tonight? They say it's a Blue Moon, but a different kind. Instead of being the second full moon in a calendar month (a "regular" Blue Moon), this one is the third of four full moons in the season. That too is a rarity, which makes it another kind of Blue Moon. I was just out for my walk and it sure is beautiful. Well, I am gonna have something to eat, and I'll be back to write more in a little while.
But I wanted to check in, because every time I see a moon like that, it reminds me of the Most Special Full Moon Of Them All, in July 2012......."A Clare de Lune coincidence". :):)
I Love You, Elizabeth!
(back in a little bit......)
10:50pm : This morn, while Pearl was at her Golden Agers meeting, I drove to the top of Reseda Boulevard, the southern end at the top of the Santa Monica Mountains. It's weird, you know. This is another place that I haven't been to in probably 25 or 30 years, if not longer, and I think that on the handful of occasions I have been up there, I am sure I've never before gotten out of the car. It's weird, or funny or whatever you want to call it, because the southern end of Reseda Boulevard is only 20 minutes from my home. I mean, I live just yards off Reseda Boulevard, albeit about 8 or 9 miles to the north, but that's not far at all, about double the mileage of one of my walks.
Maybe it's a Valley mentality. When you live on the floor of The Valley, that is your home, your territory, and the mountains are the borders of the territory. Heck, I don't know. I only know that I had never been to the gigantic wilderness park at the top of Reseda until this morning. The Santa Monica mountains aren't incredibly high, maybe 3000 feet approximately, but they are certainly rugged. In the Valley, everything is arranged very neatly, the streets are in a grid system, residential areas are regularly interrupted by small business districts. The Valley is so well organised that it kind of keeps you oblivious to the fact that there is wilderness all around you. That's Los Angeles in general - a really big city surrounded, within and without, by all kinds of wilderness, from mountains to desert to forest to ocean.
But maybe because it's such a city oriented place, you really have to focus outside of that mentality to notice all the wilderness. Mine was only a few miles away, but I'd never been there before. You'd understand if you saw the Valley.
At any rate, I think that I've been inspired by you, and also by my Dad. You go on road trips, medium length, and Dad would do the same. After working all week, he'd pile us in the car on Saturday morning and drive to the mountains (the really big 8000 foot ones up in the Angeles national forest), or take us to San Diego. He just loved to drive, to go somewhere. You are the same way.
I have always been more inwardly directed, when left up to my own devices (it's my Mars in Pisces again), but lately - perhaps because of the type of reading I've been doing (and because of your inspiration, Lake Superior, Special Sideways Tree Place, etc.), I have been making these very short trips just to explore what is all around me, especially since I am discovering that the Valley has been inhabited for such a long time, and that the Indians left behind so many artifacts.
This morning, on my trip to the top of Reseda, I saw hawks, only they were much closer than usual because I was up in their altitude. It was also dead quiet up there. This is my recent fascination, seeking out the "voice" of my environment, stripped of modern trappings. I am finding ancient Valley history in places like Stoney Point, and in the Santa Monica mountains.
For you and I, we have talked about Angkor Wat, and now I have a new site I am really interested in, called Puma Punku in Bolivia, near Lake Titicaca, way up high in the Andes. When I was in Junior High, we learned all about Lake Titicaca (most elevated freshwater lake, or whatever it was), and we learned about sites like Tiotehuacan (sp?), and the cultures of the Mayans and Aztecs, but they never told us anything about a place like Puma Punku. Google the H-Blocks of Puma Punku and you will see that it is an interesting site indeed.
I did some Googling about Stoney Point, and I see that the Tongvas lived there beginning 6000 years ago, and it blows my mind because you can still see their petroglyphs today. Those are the rock carvings I mentioned in yesterday's blog - the rocks that look like faces. One even looks like a buffalo, and another one maybe a ram, but the point is - they're there, and you can see them.......and some Indians carved them a very long time ago.
Because today's business oriented lifestyle seems transitory to me - a phase humanity is going through - I find it interesting to see these reminders all around me of a way of life that lasted for millenia. Of course - and this must be stated with certainty - we are living in an era of progress in which a great many difficulties of past civilizations have been ameliorated. I mean, we modern humans are acclimated to our modern conveniences, and would not last long trying to live a Tongva lifestyle.........
But maybe we can still learn something from them, and more so from incredibly mysterious relics like the H-Blocks at Puma Punku.
That will be another destination on our upcoming intinerary, maybe even the first!
I Love You my Angel. I will see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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