THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

My heart is a child, forever in the back seat of the car, endlessly asking: Are we there yet? Sadly, my car, just like yours, is self-driving and try as I may to influence the trip’s timetable or even commandeer the wheel, the reality is, the car is going to get to its destination at its own, sweet time. The good parent part of me has become rather deft in its ability to distract, deflect and entertain my heart from its impatience with both me and to the journey itself and I have to admit that my success rate varies tremendously based on a number of factors, which includes my willingness to believe in my own magical thinking or the amount of caffeine I’ve consumed. Coffee, it seems, is a great short-term mood supplement which is why you rarely if ever see anyone depressed or inconsolable at a Starbucks. Starbucks is our own, personal Cheers because one if their imperatives is to know your name. In Los Angeles, where I lived for years, they jus

Snow comes equipped with its own form of quiet. It’s a different kind of quiet than everyday quiet. It’s like the hushed, hold your breath silence that descends in-between movements when the string quartet is temporarily still and resonant. Leaves rustle, like brothers wrestling in their bedroom as snow makes the air thick and pungent which mutes the tumbling sonic waves of nature until all you hear is the distant bleating of herd of traffic ice-grazing somewhere out in the grown up distance. Then, suddenly, the wind makes a grand diva entrance and all the elements stand on point, as if suddenly amazed, and twirl like Graham mad in the throes of Clymenastra. This shakes the colors of autumn right out the picture like a giant etch-a-sketch, leaving the trees as haunted and bare as war prisoners left to die in the dead of winter. It reminds you how final the battles of every day are. Sitting on a winter couch, daydream-staring out my picture window is like watching

I spent hours yesterday reading my mom’s diary from 1940 and it was like taking the wheel of a Time Machine and eavesdropping on my 17-year-old mother. It was meeting someone who I did not know existed. Not like that. She was stunningly happy, full of life with a close-knit group of friends who sat on stoops and childhood beds, gossiping and dreaming about love. She went to the movies on Brooklyn’s Kings Highway every other day, seeing a double feature which she would review in a descriptive word or two. She shopped for slips and girdles and the occasional pink agora mittens in Macy’s and often took my Grandmother out for “chinks” (Vernacular of the day) and ice cream sundaes. She ironed often. Tidied up. Fretted about passing history and all the other regents' exams. (She always passed with flying colors). She fell in love over and over again with different boys like Stanley, Irving, and Murray. She danced at parties, “heard” the radio, loving Bob Hope,