Stopping and Smelling

On spring in a seasonless city

Los Angeles is a seasonless city and yet, somehow, it is spring.

Since everything here is in perpetual bloom, it comes upon you suddenly. One day you inhale and the world smells like a Diptyque counter. Above you, orange blossoms. Behind you, jasmine. In front of you, lavender. The phrases “hat on a hat” and “gilding the lily” come to mind.

For most of my life, spring has felt like a reward for brutal winter—the prize that makes you get through the sleet and the hail and the rain and the grey, the endless grey. But in a place where gorgeous days fade into pleasantly chilly nights until bad vibes and snowstorms are but a distant memory you start to wonder what you did to deserve so much beauty. Some might say too much beauty. And if you grew up Catholic, in actual religion or disposition, all that beauty can start to feel less like a reward and more like a threat.

My neighborhood has some beautiful houses up on the hill that miraculously are not ensconced in huge gates and walls (putting up huge gates and walls being a favorite pastime of rich Angelenos) which means the owners want passerbys to actually enjoy their gardens which makes me want to cry sometimes because, in a way, that’s socialism. I think. Yes, those are its official tenets: Lavender for the people to sniff! Little free libraries for the people to rifle through! A basket of lemons marked “Please Take!” for the people to pillage! 

This week it was hot. It was really hot. Too hot, probably, concerningly hot, but we’re keeping this positive. I finally took a vintage Christian Dior parasol I found at the UCLA Thrift Shop (one of the top thrift shops in my opinion) out for a stroll. When I purchased it, I had visions of elegantly striding about a meadow, being admired by virile men on horseback, trying to outrun a thunderstorm, failing, and then convalescing in a stately manor home while simultaneously falling in love with one of the virile horse men.

The reality of parasols is yes, you look cool as shit, but they’re awkward to carry. Halfway through the walk I was like, “I should have just worn my hat like a normal person,” and then, “I should have worn that hat anyway, even with this parasol, it’s not enough sun protection.” It is never enough sun protection as far as me and my mother’s voice in my head are concerned.

But then I was on the walk and looking at my neighbors’ gardens and temporarily forgetting about “the parasol problem” which would be a good name for a mystery series about a time traveler who goes back to Regency England to solve crimes.

Anyway. There were roses! Roses everywhere. And you better believe I stopped and smelled them.

Here’s a little rose-smelling tip: the most beautiful, perfect red ones don’t really smell good (or like anything). It’s the floppy, casual, messy flowers that smell incredible. Much like people: uptight and too polished, they’re holding the best part of themselves back. But open, flaws and all, you get a delicious sense of what’s actually there.  

This all reminds me of a New Yorker piece from the forties, by someone who was living in Paris at the time. They write about how even when everyone knew the Germans were coming, a man still came out and tended to the flowers in the medians. It’s a hopeful story but also upon further reflection a chilling summation of where everyone’s priorities were back then and in retrospect, they should have been thinking of more ways to not collaborate with the Nazis.

Anyway. Perhaps it’s best to not worry that all this beauty is a punishment for something that has already happened or is about to, but rather a thing to relish in the present moment. And so I will enjoy this blooming desert until the nukes or fires take me.