I went for a walk, then stopped and smelled the roses

I WALKED over to Hayworth Avenue in West Hollywood to where F. Scott Fitzgerald lived.

I took a photo, then looked around. Things seemed safe enough. Unlike in New York City, where murderers ran amok through my life and this blog.

Well, except that Fitzgerald died here in 1940 at age 44. I suspect it was the prices charged by Sunset Boulevard restaurants (a half block north of here) that killed him.

Fitzgerald was one of his generation’s many renowned writers of short stories and novels who headed for Los Angeles to cash in on writing film scripts. Think of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Theodore Dreiser, Raymond Chandler, Christopher Isherwood, and, of course, Dorothy Parker.

The hopeful notion of “I’ll get paid a lot to write good stuff for the big screen” rarely worked. The film studios insisted on watering-down scripts to appeal to the largest possible audience. The authors hated that, and their frustrations most often ended the once hopeful notion. The book publishing industry and the film industry were as different as night and day, as different as Manhattan and Hollywood.

For Fitzgerald it was at a time when the glow of The Great Gatsby had dimmed.

He was punching-up scripts (most were never produced) with a few lines of dialog for $200 a day.

He holed up in West Hollywood trying to support his daughter and the lost love of his life, Zelda, who was in a North Carolina sanitarium.

And of course, he was drinking like crazy. Yet I do love the beauty with which he put together these 14 words:

“I want to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

BUT REALLY, IT WAS THE FLOWERS TODAY! The sidewalks here are lined with them. They’re varied, colorful, calming, just a delight in most everyway. This is not at all like walking in Manhattan.

I sometimes walk around here with my five-year-old granddaughter who calls me “Dadu,” a delightful corruption of “Dad’s Dad.”

She’s always saying, “Dadu! Let’s stop and smell the roses.”

And she does.

I have so much to learn from her, right? I’m always rushing to catch the crosswalk light or find a public toilet. But she actually stops, pauses, in no rush at all, and with great delight and satisfaction, smells the flowers.

I got so far off-track through the years, worrying about money, working my ass off. And it saddens me to think the same will happen to her. Soon enough she’ll be rushing past these flowers to the office, busy on her mobile doing whatever, not stopping to smell the roses. Damn it! For now, for as long as possible, I’m trying like crazy to allow her to set the pace.

So she and I walk, we pause, we smell the roses. Life with her is so joyful.

Today, on the way back from the late great Fitzgerald’s, I stopped to smell a large, red rose (see the tenth photo). The owner came off his porch and proudly told me that it was a “Mr. Lincoln” rose. He went on, “Mr., Lincoln has outstandingly strong damask fragrance that seduces the senses.” Whoa! And now I know a guy (there, did it!) who knows his roses.

Here in LA, will these sidewalks be lined with flowers all year around? That would be cool.

I look forward to finding out.

Sincerely,

Dadu