The Whole Shebang

*This was actually written yesterday, Sunday, Sept. 7.

So, after driving across the country for five days, clocking untold of miles on my trooper of a Honda Civic, I finally arrived in LA on Wednesday to move into my supercute studio apartment. It's situated on the border between Los Feliz and Silverlake, has a great kitchen and living area, plus two purrfectly sweet cats I get to love for the next few weeks. I'm here until Sept.28 and just got off finished with the ever-fabulous Craig's List in my first round of looking for my next sublet. If anyone who reads this has one, do tell.



So far, I've found:

- Trader Joe's

- Gelson's (upper/midscale grocery store)

- Albertson's (reg. grocery store like Safeway or Giant)

- Nature Mart (health food store with amazing bulk section and juice bar)

- the nearest Yoga Works studio (Larchmont)

- the Silverlake Farmer's Market - beautiful tomatoes!

- The Alcove, a cool restaurant where I had lunch with my friends Ed and Anna when I was here in October

- a newsstand where I bought the Ross Reports (listings of agents and casting directors so I can send them my headshot and resume)

- Griffith Park Observatory and hiking trails - fantastic 50 min run yesterday.

- Los Feliz Public Library

and....
- my way home without getting lost every time!!!



Still looking for:

- Oct. sub-let

- nearest public pool, preferably free...

- direct routes home instead of guesswork, though my sense of direction is consistently getting me where I need to go
- nearest REI to get my headlamp fixed - I just need to get on-line for that one
- nearest Verizon store to change my 240 to a 323 area code for LA. I've found it, I just need to go there, but I hate the phone store...

- nearest Kinko's so I can scan my Ocean City Tourism shoot report to Taylor Royall since their fax machine wasn't working before I left

- nearest place to buy the Thomas Guide for LA



It's been an interesting couple of days. Not even two weeks, and yet it feels like ages. I think something happens when you drive as opposed to fly - instead of leaping forward in time, your clock gets stretched out or comes to a standstill. When you finally arrive at your destination, it feels like coming through a fog back into the real world, but the real world still feels unreal for a couple more days. Now that I understand where I am in the city and am beginning to trust my sense of direction, I'm feeling a lot more connected to this area, but it is truly bizarre not to have a job. 

I've been laying pretty low since I got here. I spent Wednesday and Thursday moving in and unpacking and had a chance to have dinner with my friend Vanessa from DC - she moved out here about a year ago and had some great tips for getting started out here. We went to a fun deli on Vermont close-ish to where I live and my burger patty was cut into the shape of a heart! Pretty cute. Other than dinner with Vanessa and getting groceries, I spent time acclimating to the apartment. Oh, and I did meet some neighbors - a lovely couple with a new baby - who were heading out of town and were looking for someone to water their outdoor potted plants. I was up for the task, so Markus, who's a musician, and I are trading my watering his plants for him teaching me some more guitar chords. Plus their cut flowers that would have died while they were gone and two delish organic melon that would have rotted in their fridge and can instead find a home in my belly. And Thursday night, the fabulous Vanessa once again pulled me out of the house to go to a training for some promotional work. The promotional season is picking up, so I'm hoping there will be some part-time work happening soon.



On Friday I went to my first yoga classes and spent the day in Larchmont Village where the Yoga Works (YW) studio closest to me is located. First was a really wonderful Level 2/3 Flow class with some great mini vinyasas I'm going to hold onto for my own classes. Then I went to the local deli, spilled goji berry juice on my yoga pants and was cast on the street as a young mom asking a general question to doctors on a show called.. wait for it... "The Doctors" - "My 5 year old son has an imaginary friend and every time he gets in trouble, he blames it on his friend. How can I teach him to be responsible for his own actions?" An excellent question, if I do say so myself, and not bad for my 3rd day in LA. Of, course, no payment involved, but I did feel like the universe was smiling upon me. It could have just been the hot SoCal sun, but sometimes they don't feel that different on a beautiful day. I ate my sandwich while sitting on a brick wall and read the LA Yoga Times, LA's free yoga magazine. I walked around Larchmont which is full of beautiful old Hollywood homes - tropical gardens, Spanish style houses, fountains and I even saw my dream tree in someone's yard - pomegranite! Someday I WILL have lemon and orange and pomegranite trees along with my very own abundant organic garden and a dog. Also had my first sighting of the Hollywood sign.

Next was yoga class 2, Yoga For Your Type, your type referring to your dosha according to Ayurvedic principles. More on that in a later blog - for now, you can check out these websites and take the dosha quizzes to learn more about yourself and ayurveda:


http://www.pratimaskincare.com/pratima_dosha.html

http://doshaquiz.chopra.com/



Mela Butcher, who taught, is an excellent teacher and educator and the director of the Center for Ayurveda in LA. She's 48 and her skin looks better than mine does, so if that's not a reason to try an Ayurvedic lifestyle, I don't know what is. Since we're moving away from Summer, a season of change blossoming outwards, and into Fall and Winter, seasons of storing up energy and turning inwards, we did a restorative practice focused on detoxification, breath and the bandhas. Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful. Especially in my ungrounded, new-to-the-city state. Already, I've learned so much in just two yoga classes - it's a privelage to have access to such great teachers who have trained in my style of yoga. I also gained some perspective from one of the women checking people in for class - we got to talking and she told me that, in fact, a lot of working yoga teachers in LA only had their 200 hr certification like me. This was encouraging, though I'm still interested in getting my 500 hour certification in 2009.



Yesterday, I finally got my Actor's Access page completely finished. Actor's Access is a site on-line where you can submit electronically to different film jobs. Vanessa told me about it. I also paid for a year subscription to Showfax ($68) which is another site on which you can get breakdowns for shows. Breakdowns are a list of characters and their type - if you see one you're right for, you submit. Actor's Access charges you $2 per submission but if you're a member of Showfax, it's free. I've submitted for 3 projects already, so just 31 more submissions and it'll be the right decision. ;) Of course, there's no guarantee that a submission will get you an auditions, but here's hoping. 



After that, I headed up to Griffith Park, an enormous park only about a 15 min drive from where I'm staying. The Hollywood sign is set into the hills just West of the park and you can see it from a lot of the trails as well as from the observatory which overlooks Los Angeles as far as the eye can see into the smog below. The ocean, I was shocked to realize, is not really visible b/c the air is so dirty. I think I might ask Mela, the ayurvedic doctor, about some respiratory support. Seriously - I have seen three people in air filtering masks just walking around the city. Looking up, however, is another story. The observatory has a huge telescope that's open to the public after sunset - I didn't stay that long, but I'm looking forward to going back. There's also a planetarium and some interesting exhibits on space. My run took me into the hills, along some ridges, through a dusty fissure that probably turns into a gushing stream when it rains and into a small green park called Dante's View. I'm sure some would say it's called that b/c you can look down into the hell that's Los Angeles below, but I'm not saying that. Instead, I saw a hawk flying overhead, heard a raven chuckling that sounded like deep-toned castanets, and had two nice conversations with fellow runners while cooling off in the sprinkler. Despite the smog, you can see some of the city - long wide avenues with palm trees and lots of buildings, plus a couple of other green spaces. Then it was home to make turkey chili (which turned out really well) and to watch a movie and hang out with the cats.

Today, I'm headed to a yoga class, but I'm not sure which one yet, and then meeting my friend Teddy from college for Vietnamese food. I'm not sure how long he's been here, but I'm psyched to catch up and find out what he's doing in LA. I think tomorrow I'll send out a real "I'm here" email to everyone, and look for yoga jobs and more sublets on Craig's List.



xox and love,


Jewel