We didn’t actually get to Irvine until the afternoon on Wednesday. We decided to see more of Los Angeles before we headed south.
We drove across the city up La Cieniga until we hit Wilshire Blvd. At that point, we stopped in a coffee shop and had a cup and listened and looked at the world around us.
Wilshire Bvld, AKA the Miracle Mile. A place where high finance gurus and movie moguls and many wanna-bes hang out. I found it all fascinating to watch and to listen as deals were being sought and attitudes revealed. Money, arrogance, desire and poverty all swirled aroiund us like the creme in my coffee.
We took a 20 minute walk through a Beverely Hills residential neighborhood to see what that was like.
Then we back tracked a mile or so and parked just by Rodeo Drive and went for an hour’s walk there. Interesting indeed, but less so for me that actually listening in on the coffee shop conversations. But, I wouldn’t have missed it.
Then we took Sanata Monica Blvd east thinking we’d pass through the classic on Hollywood and Vine area but my map reading ws off and I think we by passed it.
We did get to see lots of the underbelly of Los Angeles, though. After going east, Santa Monica Blvd carried us quite close to the LA downdown and we went down into the belly of that beast and all throught the jewelery / Gold district and then out to the south into the “old downtown”.
Further on, we can to a major Salvation Army Mission area and the number of walking wounded we saw camped on both sides of the street for two blocks was astounding.
We continued a bit more but then I began to worry that with me driving blindly, we might find ourselves in south-central LA and that’s not a good place to be at any time, IMHO, so I cut east into the Little Japan area and then thrashed until I came up with a freeway. I knew that once I was on one, I could fake my way to Orange County easily.
An hour or so later, after a fast rip across the LA basin, we were driving into Invine and into an entirely different world.
Entirely too much happened at my son’s house to try to recount. Suffice to say, it was all lovely. Colette was introduced, hugs were passed about and we all talked for hours. Cody and Eden, my two grandchildren were and are just wonderful. I always enjoy them so.
In line with mentioning things I’m learning along the way, I had a discussion with my son, Dan, Wednesday evening that opened my eyes a bit.
I was holding forth about the fact that I really don’t ‘get’ relationships in which people fight like dogs and cats all the time and yet stay together.
Dan said that he thinks that folks like that love each other so deeply that they can afford to fight and fully express themsleves and still know that they can depend on their other half to still be there. Whereas, he said, people that don’t argue with passion – perhaps they are really indifferent to each other and just don’t know it.
I’m still thinking about that one.
dennis