Venice

Five or six years ago, I spent a week by myself in Venice Beach.

I stayed in an Airbnb on Indiana, just off Lincoln Boulevard. A self-contained studio in the back garden.

“It’s a little hot in here, I know,” said Jennifer, my host. “You can sleep with the sliding doors open for the cross-breeze.”

“Is that safe? I mean, I’m from Brooklyn — ” 

“And in Brooklyn you’re like — ”

Here Jennifer made an X of her arms in front of her heart.

“I live in the house up there with my daughter,” she said. “I know what’s what.”

Nevertheless, when I went to sleep, I locked the doors.

*

In Venice, the clouds were slow to burn off in the morning, but even then, the place was rife with light.

Every house tripped my heart — the lines and the windows and the gardens. The gardens seemed carefully cultivated, and also careless: they spilled over fences, climb the walls of the houses. All the trees and plants were new to me. Spiky round things called “mother-in-law chairs,” big bright flowers on vines.

I bumped into a plant and was surprised to find it was hard, it did not give.

The sidewalk, engraved with warnings — STREET LIGHTING / HIGH VOLTAGE — and stamped with pleas — NO DUMPING / THIS DRAINS TO OCEAN.

The gardeners paused their work to say, “Good morning.”

I sidestepped a sleeping body, and another.

Venice was a mash-up of the Garden, and a post-apocalyptic world.

*

I was training for a half marathon at the time, my first and only.

I kept up the program while I was out in California. For my long run — ten miles — I ran to the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica, and back.

The night before, I memorized the way to the ocean, so I wouldn’t have to check my phone and reveal I was a stranger.

Lincoln to California, and California to bustling Abbott Kinney with its fancy shops and restaurants — I called Abbott Kinney, “town” — and then a beautiful street whose name I do not remember, to the beach.

The beach was a mix of Coney Island and the old Times Square, the way it used to be — souvenir stalls, tiny, grimy tattoo parlors — everything awash in that Venice light.

Once I hit the beach, I ran north, keeping the ocean on my left.

The palm trees towered over me, with their mops of hair. They felt more individual than trees on the East Coast, even when they stood in rows, perhaps because of all the blue sky between and beyond them.

Running in California was an open-ended question, instead of the repetition of self-evident facts I knew.

I was the limiter, not the land.

The land would go on and on.

*

Of course I went to various coffee shops.

At Intelligentsia, two actors talked about how hard it is to master an accent, and how if their first meeting of the day was at five o’clock, they’d wake up at four.

One of them described how he ended up in a cult.

“Sometimes I’m desperate for a community and other times — tell me something, why can’t the truth be that passionate?”

At Espresso Cielo, the lone barista managed to banter with every customer, while making all the drinks. No one grumbled.

I was trying to tip, it kept coming up as $100. 

The man behind me: “Hit the period. The period.”

“I wish I could afford to tip $100,” I said.

“Living here we never could.”

“Well, unless we strike it rich.”

“What’s your line of work,” he asked. When he saw me hesitate, he continued — “I can help you brainstorm ways to get rich.”

At Gjusta, the barista peered at my credit card, angling it to read my name.

“Just KN is fine,” I said.

“I like to make the staff learn new names,” he said, and wrote my full name on the cup:

“KATARZYNA.”

You know what to do! Subscribe, share, &/or put a heart on it!