I (Still) Love LA
I have been in LA for four weeks now. It is a relatively short period of time and I know that I am not finished transitioning yet. I kind of wish this period would be over so that I can move on with my life and feel some sense of normalcy again. Don't get me wrong. I love it here. This is where I am supposed to be right now and I am not leaving until I accomplish my purpose.

The last four weeks has brought out my spiritual side. This doesn't mean that I am attending church services or anything like that. I do spend a great deal of time meditating and and trying find deeper significance to the current, past, and future events of my life. My current favorite place to meditate is located in a park called Bronson Canyon. The canyon is probably most famously known as the film location of the Bat Cave on the television series Batman.

Bronson Canyon is a ten minute walk from my sublet. It is a great place to sit and contemplate. It is also a great people (and dog) watching location. In my "gay divorce", I had to leave behind two really sweet dogs and it is wonderful to get some loving from some random strange dog in the park. That last sentence sounds much more provocative than I intended.

This past Thursday, I sat on a rock at the edge of a steep hill. I listened to gospel music and thought about how far I've come since that summer in 1989 that I interned at a Hollywood personal management and public relations firm. I've also thought about money. My checking account was dramatically low.

All this was going on in my mind when suddenly I saw a blue baseball cap start to rise up from the steep cliff below me. Next I see a hand grabbing an exposed tree root. The hand strained as it pulled the man with the baseball cap a little bit closer to the top of the incline. Finally, the man pulled himself all the way up the cliff and stood before me.

"I made it," exclaimed the man, "Just barely but I made it." I smiled broadly and told him that just barely making it is better than not making it at all (hmm, words of wisdom for my own life perhaps). The man grinned and said, "You might be right." Without an invitation, he sat next to me and asked, "When is your birthday?" I only took a second to consider how weird and random his request was but I answered quickly. "November 8th?," the man said, "a Scorpio, that's hard to believe because most Scorpios wouldn't answer that question." He then went on to ask me about my ascending sign, and my moon sign, and all kinds of astrological mumbo jumbo. At the time, it didn't seem like mumbo jumbo. It seemed like a very normal conversation for a 60+ y.o. stranger covered with burrs from climbing up the side of a cliff to be having with a 30+ LA transplant with financial woes and a lonely heart to be having.

The man, whom I will call BB, and I talked for well over an hour. He actually took me to his house and gave me a free astrological reading. He even gave me one for Steve. It was amazing but his reading for Steve was spot on.

I hope to see and speak to BB some again soon. And I will tell you all about it. I'm going to stop writing for today because I am overdue for my trip to the canyon. I've said it once, I'll say it again. I love LA.

Celebrity spotting: On Thursday, the day that I met BB, I sat him and a friend at my restaurant.