Love at the Farmers Market

Springtime's bounty definitely includes more than just great organic veggies.

Incantation

I'll seek a four-leaved shamrock in all thy fairy dells,
And if I find the charmed leaves, oh, how I'll weave my spells!

--Samuel Lover

Love Note

I can't speak with certainty about very many things. Oh, but I have my suspicions.... I suspect that soy isn't nearly as good for us as they say it is. I suspect that almost every conspiracy theory contains a kernel of truth. I suspect that many of today's known facts will someday be in the same dustbin as flat earth theory. I suspect that consciousness is far more phenomenal, enduring and individual than anything religion or neuroscience can begin to explain. I suspect that fashion designers secretly sit around laughing at what they can sucker women into wearing. I suspect that the final season of LOST is going to be a disappointment. I suspect that rock and roll does more for curing depression than Prozac and that jazz can inspire genius. I suspect that I'm rambling. Again.

But there is one thing I know: love is real. Whether this universe is merely Newtonian-mechanical or M-theory dimensional -- love is the stuff that fires it up and keeps it humming. Love. Jesus was right about it. So was John Lennon. And I'm lucky enough to have great treasure troves of it -- indeed, probably more than my share.

Today, I want everybody to revel in a giant rave-worthy love buzz because it's my wedding anniversary. Today marks 8 beautiful years with my beloved -- the one who puts up with all my rants and suspicions and who loves me anyway. My Zen-trickster groom. My comrade and champion. The smartest man I've ever met. The world's best father. The love of my life.

Happy anniversary, Jon!

Love on Fair Oaks

Let's let Omar Khayyam offer the commentary for this one:

A book of verse, underneath the bough,
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread - and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness -
Ah, wilderness were paradise now!

Old Trees, Young Love

The crape myrtle branches aren't the only things blooming during these hot summer days...

Voyeur Sky

You never know what a sunset along the Arroyo will inspire...

I was driving the other day when I just had to pull over and admire this view. I noticed two others standing on the trail. One, a woman, had her hands over her mouth in ecstatic surprise. But she wasn't looking at the sky. Instead, she was looking at the man, kneeling before her, with a little black box in his outstretched hand.

I can only assume her answer was yes.

No, I didn't sneak a shot of their moment. But I did sneak this shot of their sunset. (May they ride happily ever after into it.)

Black Tie

A little blurry, perhaps. But then again, isn't that the way we all remember prom night?

Mayberry Nouveau

Fashions change, but things never really change. I'll wager those grocery bags have all the ingredients for an apple pie.

Everyday Bliss

I couldn't help but smile (and steal a shot from behind a pole) when I saw this happy little family waiting for the train at Mission Station. Maybe it was something special about the rattle, or the accompanying beatbox vocal improv of the dad, or the beatific grace radiating from the mother's lovely face, but that baby was giggling loudly enough to be heard across the platform.

Sometimes the mundane feels truly profound.

Forecast

If you read the headlines or watch the news, you probably won't want to leave the house. Let's review: we've got a global swine flu pandemic in the making, a few escalating wars, at least two nuclear threats and a worldwide economic meltdown. We've got a nationwide housing market catastrophe, an unemployment disaster, a health care crisis, and an education system freefall. We've got a government that appears to have lost its checks and balances -- as well as its ability to balance its checkbook. We've got enough nightmare-inducing facts and figures to have made even Nostradamus need an antidepressant.

But the couple in this picture is oblivious to all of that.

I think these two are wiser than all the scaremongering prognosticators. In this couple's world, it's just a sunny day in springtime -- a perfect time to be in love.

Love Story

I am not ashamed to admit it: I love Valentine's Day. And no, I don't mean the non-commercial, organic, too-hip-for-love-songs kind of Valentine's Day where you smirk at all the silly little people and their bourgeois customs while hosting an anti-Valentine's Day Bergman Film Festival party. I love the whole, ridiculous concept-- the wilting, overpriced roses and the battery-operated greeting cards that play Elvis songs and the tacky red lace Fredrick's of Hollywood lingerie and the big Mylar balloons in the shape of puckered lips. I think Peppy le Pew had the right idea about romance. He was undaunted, overly sentimental, and absolutely sincere. We can be cool about music and art and independent films -- but let's allow ourselves to get a little goofy about love.

I know everyone likes to complain about how Valentine's Day is just another creation by retailers to force people to buy stuff they don't need. It's an event probably orchestrated by restaurant owners, florists and jewelers. Fine. I suppose all of that is true. But what I like about Valentine's Day is that it is the one day out of the year when it's okay to believe in the hyperbolic, overzealous, madcap potential of being in love. It's one day where you can declare yourself unabashedly to someone, with full societal approval and every corny trick in the book at your disposal. There's a reason Cupid shoots arrows instead of making rational speeches. Sometimes we need a bit of a shove to make a connection. Valentine's Day is that big push -- a day where the brooding guy finds the courage to hold his boom box aloft and play a love song to the girl he can't live without.

I don't know if the two people in this photo were a romantic couple or just two friends sharing a coffee break at Starbucks. But today, on Valentine's Day, I choose to believe they fell madly in love over those cappuccinos... that they spent that afternoon finding out they both liked cherry pop tarts, John Fowles novels and Miles Davis; that they each thought The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was overrated; that they both confessed to singing in the shower and sometimes singing cheesy 70s disco songs. I choose to believe that today, when they realized they had each emailed the other the very same Neruda poem, they both felt that happy/scared/exhilarated/anxious/wondrous/thankful feeling of being alive that comes when you realize you might be falling for someone.

Happy heart day, everyone.

Punk love

From the first time my bewildered parents insisted I only listen to The Clash in the house while wearing headphones, I've known about the power of punk to irritate and often alienate. And I know it is and always has been about being aggressively anti-establishment, often nihilistic, stripped of excess and bombast while sneering at all sentimentality and attachment...

Unless you're these two, whose joyful, sparkly, romantic vibe at the train station was so infectiously happy I couldn't help but stare (and obnoxiously snap a picture.) That's South Pas for ya. Even the punk kids are straight out of Frank Capra!

The Farmers Market

The South Pasadena Farmer's Market offers its festive carnival vibe every Thursday afternoon into evening. It provides a lush selection of locally grown produce and flowers, cool handmade goodies and a staggering selection of prepared food from local and regional eateries.

It's also a simply awesome place to watch people. These two cast a megawatt glow over the place yesterday. Love is grand.