Predictably, we are in the middle of an autumn heat wave. No, I did not go to Chace Park today. This time of year, the wind blows hot air from the desert; so there is little to be gained waiting for sea breezes that are not likely to cool my brow.
Martine went downtown by herself to partake of the high-toned atmosphere around Union Station and the Civic Center. (Am I being ironic? To be sure I am being ironic.)
Tomorrow I may go downtown, though I may bail if the temp gets too high, like 95° degrees Fahrenheit (35° Celsius) or above. That walk from the Metro Rail 7th Street Station to the Central Library would be prohibitively hot. I will check the temp tomorrow morning before making my decision.
I have become very dependent on the weekly Mindful Meditation sessions at the Central Library. Then, too, there are those seven floors of books that draw me in.
Before I retired, I had difficulty falling asleep. That was primarily because, in all my jobs, my bosses were megalomaniacs who were experts at fomenting stress in their work force.
Then something interesting happened. It suddenly became cheap and easy to go downtown. The opening of the Expo Line (now the E-train) from Santa Monica to the L.A. Financial District. I wasted no time in getting a senior citizen TAP card, which meant I could whiz downtown in 45 minutes for a mere 35¢ each way.
One Thursday, I went to the Central Library at 5th & Spring Streets. I noticed that there was a free half hour mindful meditation session at 12:30 PM in one of the two meeting rooms. I attended and suddenly things seemed to change for the better in my life. I was still working, but it was apparent that the accounting firm would close at year’s end.
It suddenly became easier to fall asleep. Martine usually fell asleep around 11:00 PM, and I followed a little more than an hour later. I still chewed a 3 mg Melatonin tablet, but I started to fall asleep by using mindful meditation. I started off with three deep breaths, followed it up with an inventory of my body, from the blepharitis in my eyes to my tendency to develop ingrown toenails. Next, I would concentrate on my breaths and incorporating the outside sounds of traffic and aircraft.
Usually, I would be out within 30 minutes. Sometimes it would take longer; sometimes, shorter. I had difficulty only if I had a long drive ahead the next morning, which wasn’t often.
The key: With mindful meditation, I have a way of neutralizing stress.
The Main Branch of the Cleveland Public Library Downtown
Books and libraries have always played an important part in my life.
When I was a toddler, my mother took me to the branch of the Cleveland Public Library on East 109th Street (now Martin Luther King Drive). Not that I could read, but I could indicate based on the illustrations the books I would be most interested in. She would check them out and read them to me in Hungarian, probably embroidering a bit. The one book I remember from that period was Dr. Seuss’s The King’s Stilts, which I now have in my collection.
In 1951, after my brother Dan was born, we moved to the Lee-Harvard Area on the East Side of Cleveland. For many years, I went to the Lee-Harvard branch which was located on Lee Road, first north of Harvard, and then south of it. The head librarian was a fellow Hungarian, Mr. Matyi, who played the oboe in the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra.
During my college years at Dartmouth, I spent many hours at Baker Library, which was modeled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia. What I loved most about it were the frescoes in the reserve room that were painted in the 1930s by José Clemente Orozco.
Jose Clemente Orozco, Murals at Baker Library Reading room, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH; The Machine
Once I moved to Los Angeles, I spent some time at the UCLA University Library, but I liked going to the main branch of the Santa Monica Public Library—which satisfied me until an opportunity opened up with the construction of the E (for Expo) Line of the Metro Rail. Driving and parking downtown was always a major pain. But now I was able to whiz downtown for 35 cents in three quarters of an hour.
I am now hooked on the Central Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. Not only because of the library’s holdings, but various events sponsored by the library, especially the guided Thursday mindful meditation sessions.
The one library I forgot to mention is my own personal library of some 6,000 volumes, which I am slowly trying to thin by donations.
After a month of illness, I have finally returned to my first love: reading. I started with a reread of Lawrence Durrell’s Balthazar (the second volume of The Alexandria Quartet) and then picked up John Le Carré’s Agent Running in the Field.
On Thursday, I plan to resume my weekly visits to the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles. The combination of a guided Mindfulness Meditation session with access to the vast circulating holdings of the library is my indication that things are returning to normal. Plus, I have seven overdue books to return.
This January has been my worst month in many a year. Add to that the fact that it was Los Angeles’s worst month in thirty-one years. What happened in 1994 that was so bad? The Northridge Earthquake on January 17 of that year.
The Los Angeles Central Library at 5th and Flower Streets
Four years after the Covid lockdown put it on hold, seemingly permanently, the Central Library has restarted the guided mindful meditations on Thursday afternoons at 12:30. The meditations are conducted under the auspices of UCLA Health’s Mindfulness Education Center.
Today I attended for the third straight week and hope to continue. I find that the guided meditations ground me. Instead of endlessly planning the future or being swept up by my unfulfilled desires, I ground myself in the present. There is time for planning and for desires, but it helps first to immerse yourself in what I call the “isness” of your being.
This form of meditation is not connected with any religion or even any culture. It is presented solely as a discipline to free your mind from endless distractions. There is no required lotus position or any other position. You merely have to sit or lie down comfortably.
If you want to get a feel for what this is like, you can select one of the following prerecorded guided meditations from your computer, or select from a list from the UCLA Mindful website:
Many a times when, while trying to sleep, my mind is swirling around with plans for the next day or frustrations or unfulfilled desires, I’ve found the practice of meditation helps me drift off to sleep.
Today was a perfect day to go downtown. Instead of the usual bright sun and searing heat, we had a heavy marine layer with a light drizzle. The temperature could not have gone over 68º Fahrenheit (20º Celsius).
I started by returning three books at the Central Library and picking up three other books to read in the next month or so:
Argentinian Juan José Saer’s The Regal Lemon Tree
Italian Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Street Kids
Nina Revoyr’s Southland
From the library, I hoofed it to the Grand Central Market, where I had a delicious everything bagel with smoked sturgeon at Wexler’s Deli, which specializes in smoked fish.
Then it was on to the Last Bookstore at 5th and Spring. I picked up nice copies of two Sir Walter Scott novels at a good price: Kenilworth and Woodstock. I’m perhaps the only person I know who has the patience to read one of Sir Walter’s long and dilatory novels. Although he is not much read today, partly because he wrote in a difficult South Scottish dialect, I have always loved reading his novels. So I’ll have to consult the glossary at the rear of both books frequently. No problem there.
With my books in tow, I walked south on Broadway to 7th Street, past the abandoned old movie theaters where I used to watch all-night triple features with my old friend Norm Witty, then cut right on 7th Street to the Metro Rail station at 7th and Flower Street.
It was a good day, and I look forward to reading some good books.
Los Angeles Central Library at 5th and Flower Streets
Today I took the train in to Downtown Los Angeles (or DTLA, as it is also known) to return some library books and pick up the next batch. For the first time in almost a year and a quarter, I was able to enter the library, hand my returns to a human being, and pick up the next batch. The last time, I had to call on my cell phone and have a librarian come out with the bagged books I had put on hold.
Now the ground floor of the library is open. This includes the book check-in and check-out and the international languages department—oh, and the restrooms. For any other books, I still have to put them on hold using the library’s website.
With my books in hand, I took the Dash Bus B to Chinatown and looked for a promising Chinese restaurant that was open to indoor dining. My old standby, the Hong Kong Barbecue, was still take-out only; but I found a good option in the Hop Woo Chinese Seafood Restaurant, just a few doors down, where I had rock cod in black bean sauce.
On the way back to Union Station, I bought my usual small bag of limes from an elderly woman (only $1 for about eight limes). As the weather grows warmer, I am addicted to fresh-squeezed lime juice with a slight splash of tequila.
I still had to wear a face mask on the train and the bus, resulting in fogged-up glasses, but I am encouraged that sometime soon we will be able to dispense with them. My second Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination was two months ago, so I am hopeful that the worst is past.
The Flower Street Entrance to the Los Angeles Central Library
The Central Library still looks like this, though most of the buildings around it have changed. What is more, after a devastating 1986 fire, the building was expanded on the Grand Avenue side and remodeled. Fortunately, the murals on the second floor rotunda were saved, leaving some of the old library highlights still intact.
Because of the coronavirus lockdown, patrons of the library may not enter the building. If I want access to the library’s holdings, however, I can access the Library-To-Go service. It involves four steps:
Select the books I want to read using the library’s website
Place a hold on those books and check the status every few days
When the books are marked as being available, use the library website to make an appointment for pickup
Show up at the approximate appointment time at the 5th street entrance, phone the librarians inside, and wait until they deliver the books to you in a brown paper bag
I am currently set to go downtown on Thursday morning to pick up four books: Jamyang Khyentse’s What Makes You NOT a Buddhist; Ma Jian’s Red Dust: A Path Through China; Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers: A Novel; and Olga Grushin’s The Dream Life of Sukhanov. As I am still working on my Januarius Project. this month I am reading only books by authors I have not previously read.
Thanks to the library’s vast holdings, I can easily reserve books that are out of print and difficult to find.
I have always depended on public libraries for much of my reading material. When I lived on the East Side of Cleveland, I went to the Cleveland Public Library branch on Lee Road, where a fellow Hungarian, Mr. Matyi, was the librarian. He also played the oboe for the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra.
They had a summer reading program in which I participated for so many years that they had to invent a participation certificate at my advanced level. (I wish I still had them.)
Even then, I also visited the main library on Superior Avenue in downtown Cleveland:
It was really quite beautiful, being funded by Andrew Carnegie’s vast fortune. (Can you imagine a modern billionaire doing something like that?)
When I came out West, I started by going to the main library in Santa Monica at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and 6th Street:
Although it was fairly large with two stories full of books, I actually outgrew it. I found that they got rid of too many of their classical titles, replacing them with more recent … well … dreck.
I was elated with the Expo Line connecting Santa Monica to Downtown LA opened in May 2016. At once, I signed up for a senior pass which enabled me to go from the Bundy Station (about a mile south of I lived) to the 7th Street Metro Center, which was three blocks south of the Los Angeles Central Library—for a mere 50¢.
Even with the library building being closed due to the coronavirus, the LA Library has started a “Library to Go” program which enabled me to put a hold on the books I want to read. Within a few days, I get an e-mail saying they are holding them for me, and I just take the train downtown to pick them up.
Over the last week I have been busy reading these three books:
Kōbō Abe’s Inter Ice Age 4, a 1958 sci-fi novel about global warming
Ivan Klíma’s Waiting for the Darkness, Waiting for the Light, about Czechoslovakia’s rocky path from Communism to Capitalism
Tim Butcher’s Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart, about an English writer who re-traces Henry M. Stanley’s journey along the length of the Congo River in the 1870s.
The Los Angeles Central Library on West 5th Street
The Los Angeles Central Library is an impressive structure. In 1926 the original structure was designed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue in a combination ancient Egyptian and Mediterranean Revival style. In 1986, there was an arson fire that destroyed some 400,000 volumes, or 20% of the library’s holdings—as well as causing damage to the structure. Fortunately, the library was rebuilt and restored to much of its original splendor. It was only three years ago that I started going to the library, only after the Expo rail line from Santa Monica to downtown LA was constructed.
Thanks to the coronavirus, however, I cannot go inside the library. But I can put books on hold and make an appointment to pick them up at the 5th Street entrance. This I did, showing up at 11:15 am and calling inside with my cell phone to give my name and library account number, whereupon a librarian came out with the books I ordered in a blue bag, accompanied by a complimentary LA Public Library deck of cards.
Unfortunately, one of the books I had put on hold, Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano, was in the original French. I put a hold on the French edition by mistake. The book’s name is the same in English and French, so it was an easy mistake to make.
The big problem with going downtown during the plague is twofold:
Finding a place to eat
Finding a rest room
Thanks to one of the library cops (yes, they have their own police force), I found out that I could go across the street to the City National Plaza (formerly the Atlantic Richfield Plaza), eat at one of the few restaurants still open on the ground floor (Lemonade is pretty good), and get a free token to use the public restroom.
Tarnmoor 
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