I usually write on this blog late at night when I can’t sleep. But in the last few months, my insomnia has disappeared, and so I have neglected it. Another thing to feel guilty about? Maybe, but on the other hand, how transcendently, terrifically, gorgeously swell to sleep at night!
I think this may have something to do with being in California, which I am. The street I live on in New York has, thanks to Donald Trump, been flooded with extra traffic in the last year, and the sounds of thumping music, rattling and roaring mufflers, wailing women, whistling cads and the midnight chortles of boulevardier infants comes wafting up through the air conditioner with increasing volume and frequency. Here, there is the occasional dog barking, the wind in the trees, a mockingbird, a helicopter. Intermittent. Soft. A lullaby. We are in a very peculiar and wonderful part of Los Angeles called Venice. It was built about 100 years ago by Abbot Kinney, a tobacco baron. He dug miles of canals, some of which are still here, and called it Venice of America. There are also walk streets with gardens and cottages (and remodeled cottages in every known style, in the LA tradition) facing each other across a little paved pathway. We’re on a walk street. And in Venice, unlike most other parts of LA, people actually walk. To stores. To restaurants. Like New York! With sun. And flowers. And one of our neighbors has a red chicken that walks around the yard.

Now, as for the election, my Jewish anxiety kept spoiling the joy of having two such intelligent and decent and articulate candidates, because it was just too good to be true, I want to work for both of them, how could you choose, Oh dear now they are turning each other, why can’t we all just get along, I wish she hadn’t said that, I wish he hadn’t said that, I knew something bad would happen, I hate the media, That was quite a speech, Jon Stewart is brilliant, How could America vote off Chekesi and leave the one who calculatedly sang I’m Proud To Be An American…oops. Wrong America. Ish.