Once again, I feel lucky that my time-sense and sleep-schedule is so flexible. It makes getting up for work on a regular basis frustrating, but travel remarkably easy.

I left LA around 10pm, slept fitfully on the plane, (reminding myself, when I started to resent it, that moving for a few minutes each hour helps prevent the Dreaded Whatever-Its-Called Thrombosis, where the blood freezes in your veins)... and arrived at my hostel around 6:30 this morning. I slept for a few hours, then got up to start my day around 8:30 or 9 am, New Zealand time. I do have a little of that drifting sensation, being unaware of the time unless I check a clock, but overall I'm as comfortable today as I was yesterdya or the day before. Yay Slacker Time Sense.

I spent the last week in LA with Teresa -- a wonderfuly comforting experience. My nerves about traveling are soothed by the sense of normalcy induced by time spent with family.
My impressions of LA: Friendly people. Lots of Teresa's friends are Christians, in the sense that they say "bless you" and "I need to pray more" instead of "good luck" and "I'm so stressed out." I don't know if this is representative of the greater LA area, but it was an interesting aspect of my cultural experience there.

The Getty was awesome. There's a difference between reading about great art, or seeing pictures of it, and actually being there in person to witness its effect on you. I got to enjoy this difference ith Mary Anne in Seattle, and again with Teresa in LA. (I wonder if it's doubly fun to go with fellow artists?)
The Getty's architecture and grounds are three-dimensional great art, so there's an even more remarkable difference to experiencing them in person. I got a few postcards, but they really can't convey the experience. Lines and curves, which give you a constant sense of space, and of your own motion within the space. Kind of like the grid-lined planes of many video games, but where those lines are flat or slightly textured, these surfaces have almost infinite depth. Plants that might not compel a second glance in a garden, make very compelling walls, where hints of space peek through strantely-colored leaves or textural blossoms and curvaceous limbs. Even teh stone has an organic quality; it seems to have been formed form the remain of some ancient reef, so it is lined and pocked with coral and crustacean shapes. Clean glass, white-painted metal, and rchly grained wood are also used to set off the more organic textures and shapes.

There are places where you get a special view from exactly one place. Maybe it's just that there are so many views, and I only saw some of them. But I think a few of them were masterpieces, and part of the art was that somehow the viewers are naturally drawn to stand in just that one place, from which the special view strikes you as a marvelous surprise. For example, there was a fountain, a negative-space curve, a flattened sphere cut into the overhanging ceiling at the top, tapering down to a seed-like or shell-like buling cone cut into the wall. Water trickled down from the round lip at the top, and ran down the cone behind more quietly, fillin it with wet brown streaks in contrast with the creamy white dry stone around it. As you approach it (in my case, to see where the water was coming from, a skylit hole in the top) the curves cut into the wall and ceiling suddenly merged to create an organic, almost paisley-like shape. Teresa may have a picture of this; my camera's angle of sight wasn't quite right to capture it. If you move away, or stand at a different height, the effect tends to disappear again.

We had an exquisite ham-and-cheese sandwich (smoked ham, brie, wild salad greens, apple butter, mmmm) and wandered through a few of the art galleries. We only had a few hours there, but since admission is free (parking $5) it was unhurried and thoroughly enjoyable. It left me with a buoyant feeling, very centered and almost euphoric.

Staying with Teresa overall was generally relaxing -- it's been years since I spent a whole week with one sister. I managed to catch Teresa between jobs (she has just been accepted for a new position, yay, but was able to hang out with me instead of starting work that week.). So we slept in, drove on freeways to s her friends or hit a few of LA's hot spots during the quiet part of the week. We also did a little thrift-store shopping, swam in the pool, enjoyed the sun, and worked out -- we didn't make it to the gym, but Teresa and Jeff (her husband) both indulged my desire for more self-defense practice, and taught me a few new tricks as well as allowing me to practice and remember old ones. I'm more and more confident that I can translate a great deal of my fencing experience into realistic skills for my own protection -- I have to kill a few old habits, but the balance, dexterity, and awareness carry over to a large degree.

Further memories:
The sky was white or beige most of the time; apparenty more overcast, an just as smogy, as usual. At night, it was sort of neutral orange-grey. The sky cuts down very sharply, between blocks in some cases, making it hard to see the hills to the north. Lots of neon and freshly-painted architecture; only a few areas showed signs of visible wear without being completely desolate. And lots, and lots, of strangely-shaped trees, silhouetted against that faded sky. Palms, not native but part of that artificial environment that has come to define California in our culture. Eucalyptus, another import, and LA seems to favor the kind that look like naked skin, without the peeling bark that I've seen elsewhere. And many, many kinds of tree that were unfamiliar to me. Not only warm-weather trees like an avocado taller than a house, but also oramental trees that might have been familiar had they not been trimmed, pollarded, or trained into strange heavy-limbed and symmetrically-tufted shapes. It's like spending your waking life walking through an illustration, or a stage-set: everything shaped by someone's idea of what would look good. There are a few islands of wild scrub, mostly along freeways, but usually it's manicured plantings encased in textured concrete.

There have been many sunsets in my life lately. LA's were golden and smeary, San Francisco's cleaner except for the awesome afternoon we arrived, and the sun was setting through a cloud of smoke from over the ridge somewhere. The whole sky was caught up in it, yet another thing my little camera can't capture.

My impressions of NZ so far: Sunrise; many international accents but a majority of English-speakers; cool and lightly cloudy like home in Oregon, but palm trees and strange plants like in LA. I find myself talking more lightly -- I think it's the British patterns of inflection that I'm calling up from their storage spot in my brain. After a morning spent with train schedules, I'm off to find lunch and a phone card. I'll spend another day here in Auckland, perhaps take time for sightseeing, and then start seriously hauling myself and my stuff to get down to the south end of South Island, where I'll be working through October. I still don't know whether I want to seek professional employment after that, or continue with temporary farm-work. I don't have to decide now, but I'd hate to find myself not working by default. I am very much looking forward to seing the place, and getting my bearings for a month in one spot. I hope I get along well with Kathie in Southland, and am able to do the work she needs.

Cheers!