CALI BOUNTY

all the leaves are brown! and the sky is grey!

Hiiii <3

It’s the Summer Solstice! Woo! Today, in the Northern Hemisphere, we are bathed in light. Hopefully that means good things are illuminated.

^ I used to be so obsessed with this movie lol. “A Perfect Movie… a Great Movie”.

I just got back from California, and am still in a little sunshine and jetlag haze. One thought cuts through the fog: I never stop being mesmerized by the folkloric concept of the Odyssey of the West. My senior year of college, that was my obsession; my English thesis was on the subversion of cowboy narratives in Walt Whitman’s work and Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Which is why I’m working on a longer meditation on the concept of the Imagined Pastoral // Farm to Table that will be out next and soon.

Though I’m admittedly prone to hyper-romanticism, I maintain that California is enchanting. I’ve bopped between living on the coasts a couple times now (always in the Pacific Northwest and the state of New York), but have never been a Cali Girl. Because I’ve never lived there, I feel some attachment to the potentiality of that version of my life. I can’t hold it back. When I see morels at the farmers’ market, despite all my greatest efforts, I lunge into a state of joy.

If there’s one thing that California is known for, it’s bounty. That’s why, today I give you, a ~QUICK BOUNTY~ :

^ Cowgirl queen I saw on our way. If that’s not an auspicious vibe, I don’t know what is.

^ I can’t help but love the crystal shops! One of my favorite places is Wine and Rock Shop in Joshua Tree. Beautiful combination, utterly unnecessary.

^ Went to the original Mission Chinese and got this GREEN LYCHEE MULE! Great color. Also just truly a gorgeous meal in general. So much good green. Lush!

^ This martini spoke to me. Sorry!

^ I have learned that these are California Buckeyes and omg showstoppers over here! They are audacious and somehow look like both caterpillars and butterflies.

^ This salad literally looking like this garden.

^ Little friend outside Vesuvio. Cutie! ^

^ And of course, Special Treat

It’s hard to see these patches of light and not find some pattern, or illumination. I know that the speckles are random, but there’s something about how they seem to shine in places that makes me look at them closer, pay attention, admire, and of course… sigh.

My grandpa Leonard was a poet, and I think about the end of one of his poems a lot in California, where he lived and worked. These stanzas bounce in my head this week, as I work out a longer question, but shorter thoughts bob up to the surface of my brain. His poem, “This Poem Is For Cynics” ends:

“I buy ponies when I cannot cut the sky

To let fresh stratosphere come rushing in,

I might add, for cynics,

I buy ponies when I cannot see the stars.”

See u soon for IMAGINED PASTORAL thank you for reading xx