Dear Los Angeles

by Dear Los Angeles- The City in Diaries

  Later baby & I get to playing in bed. Her beauty just knocks me. It is unbelievable—a dream of fair women. She looks like an angel or a classic figure & yet is sensuality to the core. We indulge in a long suck & then I put her on her knees. A wild finish. Return to my work. The poems & flowers here seem in no wise affected by the sharp coolness which begins at about five. A wonderful climate. We go downtown at 6:30 to the B. & M. cafeteria—a very large affair. A very fair diner for 90 cents each but no atmosphere. Afterwards we try to find a theatre but cant. Go to Grunwalds Movie….

  Has the full forward, lavender lids & bluish white eye lids of the sex extremist. Uses the most coaxing & grossly enervating words of any girl I know. (Theo & Helen are between the sheets & no one sees what they are doing. No one, No one. Oh—oh—no one. Theo is between Helen’s thighs—Helen’s soft white thighs. Theo is fucking Helens cunt. Yes—he is—yes—yes—oh. Theo is fucking her and Helen is taking it—giving herself to him—her belly—her tittys—her thighs—oh—oh). So on to orgasm.

  THEODORE DREISER

  1949

  Billy asked me to look at a new arrangement of the ending. I did so and disapproved. Had to argue the point with Billy. He had tacked the explanatory speech about Norma’s madness at the very last. It was put in to avoid a bad laugh as she started down the stairs…but destroyed the drama of the last shot by calling on the audience to use its brains….

  …Doran came with discouraging talk about the casting of pictures that would be necessary now the exhibitors were to control product.

  CHARLES BRACKETT

  NOVEMBER 12

  1851

  This night I was alone in the office, where I slept….I had been closely examining and digesting the voluminous evidence on trial; at length finished, and was thinking of going to bed. I stepped outside the door; the moon was well up over the houses; a pleasant, beautiful night. It was between ten and eleven o’clock. The streets were unusually quiet.

  I noticed some horsemen slowly riding out of the plaza….I noticed them merely; thought nothing of it, and went back into the office, leaving my door nearly closed. I sat down again at the table.

  I was there but a moment or two, before I heard the sound of a horse approaching the office. It occurred to me, “Here comes one of my Californian friends, to see me,” which they were in the habit of doing, at any hour. This idea it was, probably, that made me go to the door; perhaps, fatigued with writing, I would have been glad to see anybody. Fortunate that I did go to the door, instead of remaining seated, because the assailant might have been truer in his shot….

  Upon examination, it was found that the ball had passed through my white hat, then through the door, and lodged in the adobe wall opposite.

  JUDGE BENJAMIN HAYES

  1854

  A person lives a whole life time in a very short period in this country of wonders and of extraordinary and exciting events—Thus while I have been here in Los Angeles only two weeks, there have been it is said eleven deaths, and only one of them a natural death—all the rest by violence—some killed in quarrels—some in being taken for crimes—some assassinated. Many of these are of the low drunken mexican or indian class. Last week a mexican called up an Irish woman who kept a drinking establishment and as she was opening the door he shot her in the breast he then rode around to the Bella Union and snapt his pistol at a man who immediately pursued him on horseback to took him prisoner, but refusing to surrender the man shot him in the groin and took him. He died the next day in the jail yard, the woman whom he had shot died also the next day.

  I saw the poor fellow lying in the jail yard writhing in his wounds. I thought surely the way of the transgresser is hard.

  THE REV. JAMES WOODS

  1927

  Bertha invited me to the second symphony directed by [Georg Schnéevoigt]: Stravinsky’s The Fire Bird was given.

  I had only heard it on the phonograph,—which I now realize is entirely inadequate. What amazing music! It held me thrilled: my hair stood on end!

  We should have left at the finish of The Fire Bird, for the following Mendelssohn violin concerto was like drinking milk after tequila. And even Beethoven’s Eroica, the last number,—I heard as in a daze. Indeed I slept through parts,—reacting from the tremendous stimulation of Stravinsky.

  EDWARD WESTON

  1934

  One thing Hollywood has done. It has made me so sick of made-up stories, that I never want to have anything to do with another, even characters I make up myself.

  ERIC KNIGHT, to a friend

  2016

  There are people at risk, people in danger. Mr. Kim poured out his heart to me in his dry cleaning shop yesterday; he has never done that before. Told me how he came from Korea, from a dictatorship, from 20 years of curfew and banned protest, how free he felt when he got here to America, to Los Angeles. How fearful he is now. I tell him I am afraid too. “But you’re a white woman,” he counters, suggesting I have nothing to worry about. “But I’m a Jew,” I tell him. “But they don’t know,” he says. “They can’t tell.” I listen to his shpiel even though I’m late to get to the studio to meet Charlotte, who is in a dark mood indeed. How can we dance the way we feel? How can we move at all? We try moving to Leonard Cohen’s voice, his new album. Did he know the results before he passed from this world? He died on Monday, a day before the election; he couldn’t have known. Maybe he didn’t want to know. Maybe he didn’t need to know. He knew the sparks of the divine were in everyone, even if they can’t always see them.

  LOUISE STEINMAN

  NOVEMBER 13

  1985

  Lunch at noon at Universal with my friend H., a studio official responsible for a little item called Miami Vice. Two years ago, my friend H. was a wreck, a frustrated novelist writing the same first forty pages of a novel about a black baseball player and a white heiress over and over again. Now he is on the studio payroll at two hundred bills per year, sitting atop the hottest show on TV.

  “I’m not gonna lie about this,” H. said. “My wife’s father’s best friend is really a hot agent. He got me in the door. That’s the way Hollywood works.”

  We ate and watched Lew Wasserman eat. It looked to me as if we basically did it the same.

  “So I was in Miami, and Don Johnson wants to direct the next episode of the show, and the producer says, ‘Sorry, Don, but we already hired this guy, Fred Finortner or something, to do the next episode. He’s really hot in episodic television.’ And Don just looks at the producer says, ‘He’s hot?’ They got the point. Don’s doing the episode.”

  “So, what’s next for you?” I asked my friend.

  “I’d like to direct, maybe a few episodes and then a feature,” H. said. “I think features are where it’s at.”

  “You have any of that money you owe me?”

  “As soon as I do my first feature,” H. said, and then I left.

  BEN STEIN

  2016

  Super moon tonight rising from the east as I watch from the west side of dry Silver Lake…listening to Leonard Cohen’s prophetic mysterious words and feel tears on my cheeks for a darkness we sense is coming.

  Trump announced he is making immediate plans to deport people. That he intends to fill the Supreme Court seat with a justice who will overturn Roe v. Wade. Get ready to go out into the street. Here we go.

  A wave of appreciation for Los Angeles, for California washes over me as I round the street on my moonlit walk, sensing the great San Gabriels looming to the east and the gentle tilt of the LA basin…some comfort just knowing that California supports human rights, that our state legislature is against racism and homophobia and misogyny. Big marches planned for inauguration weekend, stay tuned.

  As I head down Earl Street for my walk tonight, Charlie—as usual—out washing his pick-up truck, listening to the police scanner. “Ov
erdose on Broadway,” the voice says loud and clear as I walk by. The Stars and Stripes ripples from the metal pole implanted in concrete at the foot of his driveway. Charlie, gay man, Republican, flag-waving Vietnam veteran. Go figure…

  LOUISE STEINMAN

  NOVEMBER 14

  1937

  Up the valley to hollywood, and a few crazy drivers that almost annihilate us make it certain we have entered the los angeles city limits.

  CHARIS WILSON

  1967

  Finally, a criminal eight weeks late, [Igor Stravinsky] is given an arterial injection of radioactive phosphorus, by a doctor in a rubber suit and what might be a welder’s helmet. Three nurses, like the three queens accompanying Arthur to Avalon, wheel the patient to a lead-lined room in the basement….

  He asks to come to the restaurant with us. He will be able to do that very soon, I tell him. But after considering this for a moment he replies, heartbreakingly, “Oh, I realize I am not able to eat with you, but I could watch.” He also begs to be taken for a “promenade” in the car.

  ROBERT CRAFT

  1969

  Spent last Sunday in that small grass thing called a park next to the County Museum. That’s a park, I suppose, because it has grass, and it has the La Brea tar pits, carefully enclosed in wire mesh so we can’t become fossils, and cement statues of saber-mouth tigers and their babies, and a place guarded by police dogs where what look to be students sift through mud looking for more fossils. The museum is having a Van Gogh exhibition. The waiting line to get in stretches about two blocks long. I asked the guard if that was usual, such a long line. “He had a very tragic life, you know,” the guard said, “and he painted all those pictures in so few years…”

  LIZA WILLIAMS

  NOVEMBER 15

  1929

  Believe it or not—and being a constitutional skeptic, probably you won’t—but I’ve got to kind of liking this place. I was sick all the time before; now I feel pretty well; also, the kid is picking up somewhat. These things change the point of view….

  For a quarter of a century I’ve thought myself possessed of a deep wisdom somewhat tinged with a cosmic melancholy; now I discover that it was merely chronic constipation. A great many philosophies of life would go down the sewer in this fashion if the bowels functioned properly—but it must be a natural evacuation not induced by artificial means. One should spring from his couch, singing, and place oneself in the proper position in the toilet—(le cabinet, I shall say to you, for you, too, have traveled)—carolling all the time. The agreeable tenor of one’s voice is punctuated by the deep, glad bass of the bowel.

  …Even in my remote childhood there could’ve been few of these idyllic strains from the ringing gut, or I should remember them….There was no toilet paper in the villages of northern Illinois in my infancy, nor in my strenuous youth. One either rasped one’s anus with a corncob, or poisoned it with printers ink from a leaf of Montgomery Ward’s catalog.

  …I may do some work for the movies; I may not! I think, perhaps, such work might tend to increase and confirm the rediscovered peristaltic action which I enjoy. On the other hand, it might make it run into a flux. The art of life is to find and hold the proper tension.

  DON MARQUIS, to his oldest friend

  1943

  Now I play my Hawaiian records and smoke my second pack of cigs for the day….

  Today for the first time in a month or so I wrote pretty nicely. On the last scene of “Gentleman Caller.” I have returned to the original version of it. It won’t be a total loss after all. But it is very, very sentimental. Ah, well, I am not Dostoevsky nor even Strindberg. I must work within my limits.

  Tomorrow I will take a bike trip through Hollywood to Pasadena. I have bought a new pair of glasses.

  Hungry! And happy?

  I will ride over to the “Quick and Dirty” for a midnight meal. Heigh Ho!

  TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

  1970

  November 15 (Sunday). I began OMEGA MAN today. We started with a small crew (no sound) and me in the Sunday-silent downtown streets.

  CHARLTON HESTON

  NOVEMBER 16

  1849

  Leaving Los Angeles at one o’clock, with forty-six mules and ten men, I making the eleventh, and two of the number being my true friends Browning and Simson, we passed eastward of the town, and followed the little river of the same name, and camped on the best grass we had had, and with so good a beginning, expected to have the same for our poor animals for the rest of our journey, and in some degree recruit them and heal their sore backs.

  Leaving this rancho we camped five miles further on our way, up an arroyo, in tall, rush-like grass, where we had only bad water, being so charged with sulphur and various salts as to be undrinkable. The hills are of a friable, whitish clay and sandstone, and after a very steep ascent, we gradually descended into a beautiful valley to the rancho San Francisco, and encamped in sight of it with good water, and plenty of wood. In the morning Rhoades killed the first black-tailed deer that any of the party has secured. We found it very good meat, and quite enjoyed it.

  JOHN W. AUDUBON

  1906

  Hunt sent me over a wonderfully handsome color elevation of the Southwest Museum to-day. If we build it on these very lines it would be the handsomest Museum in the world….

  Kroeber [Anthropologist Alfred, father of Ursula K[roeber] LeGuin] rather won my heart this morning…he is so frank and young a lad that one can’t get as disgusted with him as one does with the 60-year-old incompetency that can’t fall out of the back end of a wagon. His lecture is to-morrow night and I hope we can get an audience for him.

  CHARLES LUMMIS

  1969

  I am going crazy and can’t stand the post office job any longer. I have one of two choices—stay in the post office and go crazy (I have been there eleven years) or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I’ve decided to starve.

  CHARLES BUKOWSKI, to an editor

  NOVEMBER 17

  1940

  Just now T. and I went out from the warm lighted study and the whuddering firelight of the living room to the porch and watched a half rainbow grow and die against the hills….

  It’s long since I wrote here. There are days when I want to, but I am too content—and other days my spirit is too black. Today, after a weekend of company and, just now, a highball, I am verbose but uninspired—and today I choose to write. My mind is full of my own despair, muted fortunately. It is best to write of things like weather and furniture.

  The weather toys with rain: to rain—not to rain. I long for rain, to help the plants and more especially the springs—which are still strong, thank God. There is an occasional spate of warm gray drops against the patio windows, and the fire feels good. I brought in several logs, just as the weather changed….

  The springs are flowing sweetly. The tank springs leaks, and we go up now and then and whittle a plug or two of soft pine and fill the holes. In a year or two we’ll have to build a reservoir, preferably of stone. The land around the house is much as we found it. I’ve cleared it off near the buildings, because of fire, and behind the house have cleared and nourished a little rocky knoll planted with tamaracks, which may someday be beautiful. It must have been planted there among the rocks by old Captain Hoffman. The little dwarfed trees respond almost pathetically to encouragement….

  My heart is heavy, thinking of my friends in France and of England so hard pressed. I can hardly bear to think of anything at all these days, and dwell resolutely on the growth of a kitten or an acacia tree and the progression of clouds in a winter sky.

  M.F.K. FISHER

  1949

  I think the movie code would make a first-rate story for you. As much as it’s discussed, I can’t remember a really thorough examination of its operations. There is constant argument that
it should be revised, after something like twenty years, and rewritten in the light of whatever progress we’ve made during this passage of time, but if there is any actual move in that direction I haven’t heard about it. It was particularly awkward during the war, when millions of people were killing each other without being arrested and tried for it, a clear violation of the code.

  NUNNALLY JOHNSON, to his editor

  NOVEMBER 18

  1952

  Southern California talks of itself as the Southland, and is hardly even a part of the Union—when you mail letters to the rest of the country you drop them into a post-office-slot marked The States.

  RANDALL JARRELL, to John Crowe Ransom

  2013

  On this oddball anniversary I will just give twenty things I learned….

  6. When you least expect it something great will happen but pretty girls/boys don’t want you, they want the reference book.

  7. No matter what people say when they leave, you will never hear from them again.

  8. There is nothing on this job that is more important than your kids or significant other. Go home if they need you. Also text them or make calls within reason. Yes, that is against the rules…