Oh, Malo Malo Malo! Thank the lord I found ye! I don't know why it took me so long either, because after my very favorite restaurant Cobras and Matadors closed, I was absolutely intent on checking it out since it's the same owners, but for some reason it just didn't happen until one fated night.
Zooey was in town again, thank the lucky stars, and when we were invited out to dinner there, I was basically jumping for joy.
I do that sometimes.
First off, the atmosphere is perfect. Dim reddish lighting, wooden tables. To me, it felt like a bigger Cobras and Matadors, like they may have used the same tables and chairs and everything. Which is just an interpretation based on distant cloudy foggy memories, from the corners of my mind, but I loved feeling that way, in any case. I can get sentimental about pretty much anything, though, even chairs.
As to dinner, we started off with the creamy Habanero salsa and soft chips. Wow! That was something else! I think they have a variety of salsas to choose from, but I really can't imagine there being a better salsa in the universe, so I'd be hard pressed to try a different one next time. And soft chips. Well, now, those things are just a little bit of heaven in a handbasket. I could have dined on those alone and been one happy girl.
But, then, all of dinner was amazing. Mine, squash blossom tacos. Theirs, some spectacular looking carnitas. And I was one happy girl. And we were one happy crew. And I'm real glad I finally found that place.
Plus, it's just good to get out, in this, the era of my unemployment. Lest I forget how you don't wear sweatpants all the time.
Then it was a glorious Sunday afternoon and Zooey and I decided to venture up to the Observatory. I've long loved that place, and usually hike up to it, but this time we drove and, incidentally, still sort of had to hike up to it anyway since the parking lot was overflowing about a mile down the hill. So we walked up there in that crisp air, the hills and city spanning out around us.
We wandered into the Observatory and did some observing. There's so much to see in there and it overwhelmed me at times because, well, I think too much is the main reason. We checked out the panel of existence. I mean, that's the only way I can think to title it. Just a long walkway with a small model of time along the wall, the Big Bang and the almost 14 billion years that passed before we people arrived here. Insane. Insane. This universe.
Me, being existence, contemplating its magnificence. And what it is. It's magnificence, and so are we.
And then we walked outside and the sun was about to set and the half moon was floating above us. And we were in space there. Zooey and I, standing on the earth, circling around the sun, the moon overhead. I couldn't quite get my mind around it all. Naturally, I suppose. That's some serious business to consider. Where are we? What is this? How did this come from an explosion in the middle of nothing? But in those questions, there was sincere awe. And my heart so full of gratitude that it could just about break. And somehow, I knew that it all had meaning.
The hills were spanning off from dark and close to pale and distant and the sky was orange and bright and then the sun just crept lower and lower softly behind those hills and became an enormous red ball in the brightest golden sky and, for a split second, there was silence. Just everywhere. All of LA. It was quiet. And then the sun disappeared as we rotated and spun around it. And there we were, side by side, just standing on planet Earth.
14 billion years to get here.
And all I could think was, we're in space. And, also, this is the best Observatory ever!
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