desert in bloom

This blog, people have commented, lack variety of characters... There is only one hero, the lonesome cowboy... Which is fine, and even very good for talking of the long rides accross country. However, after attentive reflection and conscious of the formal implications, I have decided to include other humans starting from today.

Desert in bloom. Today is poppies day at Antelope Valley, with my new friend, Susan, we set off at 9 from LA direction north east towards the natural reserve. We stop over at Palmdale about 40 miles from LA in the middle of the desert and we get a plentiful breakfast at a Salvadorean restaurant. The area around Palmdale, almost as large as LA itself is covered by a grid of roads, It is so desertic that streets have no proper name, those going N to S are named with numbers and are called streets, those gong E to W are named with letters and are Avenues. The officer at the parking of the Reserve warns us about rattlesnakes in the fields. I think it is a polite way to say "do not go off trail". The ladies at the visitor centre are dressed in orange, like the poppies. Yes, orange. Unlike the poppies in Italy, red and delicate, these Californian poppies are bigger and they are orange. They mix with very small yellow daisies, and other desert flowers. The desert is not completely covered as it happens from time to time however Susan, who is a professional photographer, http://www.susanandersonphoto.com/ solves the problem by taking a worm eye view pictures.

here is a pallid imitation from my part.

The wind is blowing, the scenery of course is quite wonderful, and even sublime, especially if you think (oh Freud!) of all those rattlesnakes sneaking among poppies and daisies.

When around we start heading back a long line of cars is waiting to get in the Poppies Reserve car park.

The afternoon is devoted to the opening of an exhibition at Culver City, the arty/trendy area of Los Angeles. http://www.ccgalleryguide.com/

This specific opening is a dedicated to Kehinde Wiley considered very good, of a series of his portraits of brazilian boys. http://www.robertsandtilton.com/exhibitions.html/ A long cue of cool dressed people wait to have the artist's signature.

Here we meet a friend of Susan, Chris Pete, a curator and an artist himself, is a cool guy, he will come to Massa (tuscany) in september, we may meet then. http://www.christopherpate.com/

after a while we move, together with to Mandrake, the bar most "in" at the moment in Culver City. http://www.mandrakebar.com/ There is not sign on the front (you have to know...). Nobody seems to be aware that Mandrake is an comic strip hero, I thought it may be an italian invention but it is American, howeverlooking around on the top shelf behind the bar I see two issues of the comic strip, funnily they are in Italian, and Italian is the bottled water they are serving, what's the connection here?