Tiki Graduation Party!

Mom and Madeline in the foreground, Natalie and Jagger behind the bar
Photo by Melissa Burman

Last May my family hosted a tiki graduation party for my sister Natalie when she graduated medical school. The decorations, food and drinks were so fantastic that I had to write a post about it. This post is so late because, oops, I had a baby in the interim. 

Another thing - Natalie's accomplishment was so amazing - she put so much hard work into this degree. We are infinitely proud of her and so lucky to have her in our family.

Photo by Melissa Burman

The bountiful food spread was colorful and delicious. We also had bbq courtesy of my dad. This table is worthy of Pee Wee Herman.

Photo by Melissa Burman

Natalie's fiance Jagger was the bartender. He made a to-die-for punch with gin, fresh strawberries and basil.

Photo by Melissa Burman

Jicama, mango, coconut milk, and lime salad - can you say "YUM"?!

Photo by Melissa Burman

Melissa's famous holiday olive balls, including cheese!

Photo by Melissa Burman

The party took place in a bungalow on the creek in Nichols Canyon, in Hollywood. The Beatles stayed at the house in the 1960s when it was owned by one of their producers. 

The party was a great success with guests from as far as Oregon. It was the perfect beginning to my sister's medical career, which, knowing her, will be full of laughter and triumphs.

The Getty Center - Photo Essay

Please enjoy these photos I took about a year ago of the stunning Getty Center Gardens in Los Angeles. Amazingly, this museum is free!

Photo by Madeline Horn

Photo by Madeline Horn

Photo by Madeline Horn

Photo by Madeline Horn

Photo by Madeline Horn

Photo by Madeline Horn

Photo by Madeline Horn

Photo by Madeline Horn

Photo by Madeline Horn

Photo by Madeline Horn

The Getty Website - http://www.getty.edu

Modern Pilgrimage Part Five: Zen Center of Los Angeles

In this five-part series guest blogger and filmmaker JL Aronson writes about his Fall 2012 pilgrimage to Buddhist centers in California and beyond. Follow his journey as he meditates his way through the West. Find out more about JL here. See more photos from JL's pilgrimage here. Happy reading! - Madeline

ZEN CENTER OF LOS ANGELES

Los Angeles Zen Center

Founded in 1967 by Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi Roshi, Zen Center is located on a quiet stretch of LA's Koreatown neighborhood, occupying several houses and buildings on back-to-back blocks.

Photo by JL Aronson

LA is a funny place to those casually acquainted with it. On the surface, it seems like an oil spill of a city, populated by slick, sunglassed people, each trying to be convincing at one role or another. It sounds deeply in need of Dharma, of something to help break the spell of delusion. Of course, the local view is far more complicated. Los Angeles is exceedingly diverse and many of its inhabitants are drawn from all around the world. There are those looking for a sense of connection to the communities they’ve lost, or searching for answers to questions no one thought to ask before electricity, and those looking to peel back their own layers so as to face the wages of life less clumsily. They say in India there are as many Gods as there are people. In LA, they do it a little differently. There, the Gods are all schizophrenic self-help deities and there’s one for every personality. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find a little truth if you leave your proverbial cameras rolling.

Zen Center of Los Angeles, Zendo Building (left), Sangha House (right)
Photo by JL Aronson

It was a different town in 1956, but not too different. That year, a 25-year-old, fresh-faced monk named Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi arrived from Japan with little English or any notion of what he was getting into. Maezumi had come from a prominent Buddhist family and his father, a distinguished temple priest, had found the young Hakuyu to be an eager student of the tradition. He was trained, not only in his father’s Soto lineage but by another renowned teacher in the Rinzai lineage.  He’d been sent to America to assist at a Zenshuji Soto Mission in LA’s Little Tokyo, a downtown neighborhood where Japanese had been settling since the beginning of the century. The mission served as a cultural center for immigrants and American-born Japanese but it wasn’t big on meditation or any of the other practices that were usually left to monks.  American Angelenos didn’t know or care much for such distinctions. What they did know in the late fifties and early sixties was that beatniks were into Buddhism—particularly Zen—and beatniks were cool. After a few of them came around to inquire within at the Soto Mission, Maezumi happily agreed to start offering them classes in zazen. 
This development didn’t sit well with the establishment in Little Tokyo. I imagine that memories of forced relocation and internment were still fresh at that time and few wanted whatever trouble might come from dungareed and unshaven hipsters coming around to cultivate their awareness. Awareness of what? What would they tell their politically-connected parents and older siblings who worked at banks? Thank you very much and no thank you.
As a more recent immigrant, Maezumi didn’t see things this way. He saw an opportunity to share what he’d inherited, both spiritually and culturally. In 1967, with the encouragement and support of his growing number of Western students, the Zen Center of Los Angeles was born.

Zen Center of Los Angeles
Photo by JL Aronson

When I visited the Zen Center in early November, it was possible to declare that the heyday was not recent. Maezumi Roshi attracted hundreds of students at the height of his popularity as a teacher. Of the practitioners he trained, a number of them received Dharma transmission and went on to found highly influential second-generation temples throughout the United States, many of which flourish to this day. ZCLA continues to attract a steady group of people seeking an antidote to agitation or a blueprint for curing the blues. But it’s a smaller group than was there before, and it struck me that a majority of those in the community had remained from earlier times. Where were the young? Had Southern California tuned out and turned off its mystic mind?

Hungry Ghost/ Day of the Dead Altar at Zen Center of Los Angeles
Photo by JL Aronson

The complex of houses and apartment buildings that comprise ZCLA are a testament to the spirit that was very much alive in the seventies. At that time, the larger culture was retreating from the previous decade’s excesses and seeking more practical comforts. In order to meet a growing demand for the Dharma, the Zen Center came to occupy a stretch of two side streets in LA’s Koreatown. The backs of several houses were joined together by a series of courtyards and small gardens where much of the community life takes place. Two small apartment buildings were converted to house up to 150 residents, some of them as families. Though most of the residents have always been free to pursue their own careers by day, the Center had become a humming, wide-eyed village with an urban skyline. And like other city centers, a rural retreat facility and monastic training center was developed. Yokoji Zen Mountain Center, located in the San Jacinto range of Southern California came to serve a similar role as Tassajara, Green Gulch, Great Vow, City of 10,000 Buddhas or any number of other monasteries with a metropolitan presence. 

Zen Center of Los Angeles
Photo by JL Aronson

  In the early eighties, both San Francisco Zen Center and ZCLA were shaken by unrelated scandals involving the misuse of money, sex, and alcohol. To many, Buddhism had seemed like an exotic alternative to the dominant culture of hypocrisy and corruption, including other religious institutions. Though some left, disillusioned, the groups as a whole survived with safeguards against such things happening again. Informed by wisdom from the East, it was Western democratic principles of transparency and oversight that allowed these and other centers to move forward and evolve, assuring that generations to come could benefit from teachings of that most incorruptible of men, the one known as Shakyamuni Buddha. 
Maezumi Roshi died in 1995 while visiting family back home in Japan. His long time student, Wendy Egyoku Nakao, took over as head teacher and abbot in 1999. While I was visiting, I got to experience some of the soft, joyful, inviting touch that seems to characterize the Zen Center under Roshi Wendy’s stewardship. The Mexican Day of the Dead had just taken place and many parts of Los Angeles were still celebrating with multicultural pride. At this time of year, when Halloween is also celebrated, many Buddhists hold Hungry Ghost ceremonies to honor the unfulfilled dead and potential we each have for greed or generosity. For the first time, ZCLA decided to mix all three. Participants were invited to attend dressed as either a dead ancestor, or just a dead person. In other regions, this might have been met with shrugs, however, this being Hollywood, people are always ready go in character. For those without a trunk full of costumes, props and face paint were offered.

Hungry Ghost/ Day of the Dead Festivities at Zen Center of Los Angeles
Photo by JL Aronson

Each morning begins at Buddhist practice centers with a liturgy ceremony and this particular Sunday was no different, except that participants seemed to have walked off the set of a zombie movie. Following the service, the 30 or so undead on hand proceeded to the central courtyard. Altars had been set up, festooned with old photos of the departed, friends and family members of those of us still walking, still awake. Simple instruments and noisemakers were handed out. And then, one at a time, each of us stepped forward into the center of the circle we’d formed, and invoked the name of an ancestor, at which point the rest of us shook our shakers, tambourines and hand drums for a few seconds of un-silence. It was absurdist, reverent, irreverent, and fun.

Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao and a visitor on Day of the Dead at Zen Center of Los Angeles
Photo by JL Aronson

Roshi Wendy herself wore a pink boa and a face-painted skeletal mask. After the ceremony, she greeted me and my friends warmly, offering regards for the sangha family back at my own practice center in New York. Expecting this to be a family event, I’d brought with me a couple local friends who’d never been to any kind of Buddhist center before, along with their two young children; as it turned out, the only children in attendance. 

URL addresses don’t get more descriptive than this: www.zencenter.org

My pilgrimage ended here. A few days later, I drove out to the airport, returned my rental car and boarded a red eye flight back east, prostrating all the way. This wasn’t a comprehensive survey of West Coast Buddhism. Many more highly respected practice centers would have made it onto a longer itinerary. Some of them would have been Vipassana-style, some in the Tibetan tradition, and one of them certainly would have been Vietnamese. That said, a few places that I visited but didn’t get to mention in this chronicle were the Berkeley Zen Center, the Santa Cruz Zen Center, the Zen Community of Arcata, CA and—in Portland, Oregon—Dharma Rain Zen Center. I could imagine myself spending lots more time in any one of the temples I was fortunate enough to get acquainted with. But for now, I’m back to staying present in the places I call home. 

Do some of your own explorations starting right here, right now. Each of the links provided bring you to a treasury of info about how to get there and what’s happening throughout the year. Or research a practice center, monastery or temple closer to you. Most people hem and haw, not sure which tradition is right for them. Many of the websites associated with these centers feature free recordings of talks by the teachers, along with links to books and articles. But there’s nothing wrong with just diving in. And in fact, that’s the only true method there is.

Click here to explore the Modern Pilgrimage series.

Road Tripping the 101

Solvang Danish Village, California

In Search of the Beach
Ventura is a beach town with urban planning problems - the 101 Freeway acts as a divider between downtown and the beach. On a bike ride from my sister Natalie’s house I crossed two freeways and passed many strip malls to reach the ocean, just two miles away. 

San Buenaventura Beach

Seaward Avenue near the beach is lined with weather-beaten buildings offering fish and chips, tacos, beer, real estate, surf gear, and hot dogs. I saw a man smoking a cigarette outside a row of tiny apartments the size of hotel rooms half a block from the beach. Homes in need of a paint job have big decks upstairs for the ocean view. I felt comfortable in this neighborhood. It felt lived-in. The beach is wide, long and lovely with soft light sand, aqua blue water and small waves. I could have spent a happy beach day there if I had more time. 

Madeline and Mark with the famous Solvang big clog

Solvang Danish Village
On the drive north on Highway 101 from Ventura to San Francisco, my travel partners Mark and Marcin and I did some classic road trip activities. First we stopped at Solvang Danish Village, an entire town built to resemble a Danish hamlet. The shops of Solvang Danish Village sell pretzels, cookies, folk dolls, and postcards. 

Madeline and Mark with Danish phone booth

When we stopped at a bakery to eat a “Danish waffle,” a crispy elongated pastry filled with chocolate and whip cream, Mark pointed out that Solvang seems to be a seniors’ vacation hot spot. Everyone aside from us was part of a grey haired heterosexual couple. Me, Mexican American Mark and his tall Polish husband Marcin stood out. A couple in the bakery asked Marcin his height, then challenged him about it, accusing him of being taller than he said he was. 

Even if we didn’t fit in, I loved Solvang Danish Village. Without paying admission, we stepped into a Danish theme park that felt like an alternate universe.

Gold Rush Steak House, Madonna Inn, San Luis Obispo, CA

Madonna Inn
Our last stop was Madonna Inn, a 1960s rock and carved wood confection with themed rooms like the “caveman,” “edelweiss,” “espana,” and “hearts and flowers.” Click this link for photos of all the rooms http://www.madonnainn.com/features.php 

The Gold Rush Steak House is a misleading name for the main restaurant at the inn. Cotton Candy Fantasy would suit it better. Apparently they serve steaks on those pink tables in pink booths, with diners seated in pink chairs atop a rose carpet flanked by red velvet wallpaper lit by golden cherub chandeliers. Seems like awfully feminine decor for a steak house, but maybe that’s just me. I would expect to eat caviar, champagne and ice cream sundaes in those booths. Casual visitors can have a cocktail at the bar with an equally misleading name, Silver Bar, which features the same cotton candy decor as the restaurant, with pink naugahyde bar stools and carved wooden grapes. 

Melissa Burman stayed at the Madonna Inn for her one year anniversary in the Swiss Rock room. She was dazzled by the sparkling red walls in her room. She also enjoyed the colorful cut glass goblets at the Gold Rush Steak House. 

Melissa’s favorite part of Madonna Inn was the pool with a waterfall. She said, “The pool is built in to a cliff overlooking the inn and San Luis Obispo, and it’s heated to 86 degrees and open until 11pm, but beware of the $30 pool fee when you check out.”

Madonna Inn, San Luis Obispo, California

Road Tripping

Unhurried road trips are the best. I love it when the people I travel with are open to stopping whenever we feel inspired to explore a roadside attraction. We reached San Francisco in time for me to have dinner at my dear friends Sarah and Tomas’s house before driving myself back down the coast home to Santa Cruz. As always, the road trip got me thinking of all the cool places I have yet to explore in my home state. Time to start planning! 

Links
San Buenaventura State Beach
Solvang Danish Village
Madonna Inn

Surf Lessons!

Madeline and Natalie waiting for waves
Photo by Paddy Bex

I grew up in Santa Cruz’s Pleasure Point neighborhood, world famous for surfing. Jack O’Neill himself (inventor of the wetsuit) lives a short walk from my house. Getting held under by the freezing ocean current, face in the sand, feet pointing towards the air, instilled a healthy fear of the ocean in me. I had no interest in surfing. I wasn’t chasing big waves before class in high school like many of my classmates. 

I realized that surfing was something that I might actually be able to do in my early thirties, when a bunch of my art museum colleagues from San Francisco started the sport simply by taking lessons at Cowell’s Beach, near the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz. 

Mondos Beach, Ventura
Photo by Madeline Horn

My sister Natalie heard that Ventura is the best place in California to learn to surf. She was on a hospital rotation in Ventura, so we signed up for a private lesson with Paddy Bex, a lady surf instructor who provided all the gear. 

Permanent oil rigs are visible in the ocean on the drive to Mondos Beach from Ventura. We arrived at the crescent-shaped beach on a sunny day. The Channel Islands stood in the distance, so large that they felt like the other side of a bay. Scrub-covered mountains reached the beach. Despite the rigs, the ocean sparkled a deep blue and welcomed us in.

Madeline sunbathing pre-surf
Photo by Natalie Horn

Most of the boards in the water were yellow or blue foam beginners’ longboards. Other people were learning to surf there too! I watched two dads casually catching waves with Coronas in hand, while teaching their three kids to surf. 

Paddy’s student before us was a tan tattooed former surfer who had been hit by a car five years ago. He suffered physically and also had brain damage. This was his first time surfing since the accident. He was thrilled to be in the water again. He told us he had surfed Pleasure Point, our Santa Cruz neighborhood, many times before the accident. We were touched by his perseverence and his enthusiasm. Paddy’s skill with him made us feel completely safe with her. 

She instructed us to paddle with our chest up, give two extra paddles after we felt the wave lifting our board, push ourselves up to standing, then look at our destination, not at our feet. We put on wetsuits and simply walked into the calm water. We never reached water that was over our heads. Paddy pushed us to give us a head start on the little waves. To my utter amazement, I stood up on my third wave! Surfing felt good, like gliding. I was in disbelief that it was happening. I didn’t know I had the coordination in me. 

Natalie at Mondos
Photo by Madeline Horn

Our dismounts were uber-unglamorous. Since the water was so shallow, Paddy instructed us to sit, fall back or belly flop to dismount - no diving in. Before we knew it, our hour was up. I could have stayed in for another hour. Paddy Bex was enthusiastic and friendly, making us feel comfortable. Most importantly, she got two famously uncoordinated and un-athletic sisters to stand up on surf boards in the ocean. She even brought a waterproof camera to document the lesson and emailed us photos later!

Now, I’m back in Santa Cruz during an especially cold winter, where the die-hards surf regardless of the weather. I’m not a die-hard, but I look forward to trying the waves here in Pleasure Point when the weather warms up. 

Sign up for classes with Paddy here: http://www.paddybexsurf.com

Huaraches and Boba in Ventura

Ojai
I never intended to arrive in Ventura with a raging hangover. I had been in San Francisco for one evening, which spontaneously turned into a night with friends - dinner, an art show in a garage, drinks at the Rock Bar, and then, ill-advisedly, more drinks. The only sleep I got was in the back seat of the rental car on the six hour drive south. Mercifully, Marcin, our Polish driver (and my friend Mark’s partner) handed me a 7 Eleven breakfast biscuit as soon as I hopped in the car. That biscuit was like a gift from heaven. I know not to party till the break of dawn before a big trip, but sometimes I forget lessons I've already learned. 

We met my sister Natalie in Ojai at The Farmer and the Cook. Natalie is in medical school and she was finishing a rotation in a hospital in Ventura. As it turns out, Natalie was recovering from a night of tequila. What a blessed coincidence! Neither of us had to feel remorseful for squandering our good health and spirits by overindulging the night before. We could lazily allow our companions to shuttle us around and not have a care in the world. 

The Farmer and the Cook is a health food market with a Mexican-inspired breakfast and lunch counter. My matcha green tea smoothie refreshed and revived, while just half of my huarache filled me up and satisfied. Huarache (“sandal” in Spanish) is a Oaxacan specialty, consisting of an oblong (shaped like a sandal) cornmeal patty covered in Mexican goodness, like salsa, meat, avocado, and beans. Desert surf hippies dined outside on the patio with us. I felt a mess, but the tan men with blue eyes, messy long blond hair, and fashionably disheveled clothing cheered me up a bit. Mark, my friend who grew up in Ventura, and brought me south on this trip with his husband Marcin, called them the “commune people.” 

Watermark on Main
Photo by Madeline Horn

Ventura

Although we didn’t run into any more sexy commune people the rest of our trip, we did manage to enjoy ourselves. On Ventura’s palm-lined Main Street thrift stores that cater to low-income families and have been around for decades co-exist with newer upscale boutiques and restaurants.

My first night in town Natalie and I met her medical student roommate Jen and her boyfriend Adam for happy hour at Onyx Bar in the stunning 1920s brick and Spanish tile Watermark on Main restaurant. They had run out of artichoke dip - the dish that had lured us in for happy hour - so they offered us calamari for a discount. Our hangover bellies welcomed the fried squid. 

Before we knew it, Adam’s face was on the flatscreen TV behind the bar, in an ad for Finding Bigfoot, the show he works on. This prompted him to tell us about the time he had to walk through the forest in total darkness, as to not disturb the “squatch,” as they call them, and a stick poked right into his eye. He called Jen for advice on what to do, and like a good medical student, she panicked and googled it. Miraculously the eye healed perfectly. He now wears goggles when walking in the forest in the dark, which he has to do often for the show.  

Natalie's tamale breakfast at the Channel Islands Harbor Farmers Market
Photo by Madeline Horn

Oxnard

I can’t say Oxnard in my head without hearing the Ill Repute Song “Oxnard!” I often “sing” the song to Mark, which is just me yelling “Oxnard!” in his face. The next morning Natalie and I met Mark and Marcin at the Channel Islands Harbor Farmers Market. The harbor felt like vacationland with bright sun, a wide open blue sky, palm trees, and townhouses hugging canals. We made breakfast out of a taco al pastor and a chicken tamale and bought produce for a barbecue later.

Sisters at the Vogue Theater Swap Meet
Photo by Mark Almanza

Vogue Marquee
Photo by Madeline Horn

The rest of Oxnard is a mixture of mid-century architecture and nondescript 1980s and 90s buildings. Mark brought us to the Vogue, a movie theater he used to go to, which now houses a swap meet and a Mexican grocery in the lobby. Vendors in the windowless old theater sell fuzzy Mexican blankets, shoes, clothes, and baby items. An arcade with 1980s video games sits against the side wall. A sloppily painted black and silver beauty parlor is stuck in the corner. 

Boba Tea Machine!
Photo by Madeline Horn

Boba
Photo by Madeline Horn

Next, Mark took us to White Rabbit, a new Filipino fusion restaurant that started as a food truck and got so popular that they opened a brick and mortar restaurant. Their menu features dishes like Carne Fries, any meat on top of fries, covered with swiss cheese. White Rabbit brews each boba tea individually with a shiny chrome tea machine larger than most cafe’s espresso machines. Baristas shake the hot tea in cocktail shakers with ice to cool it down. Natalie and I split an almond tea with aloe and boba. I had never tasted boba or aloe so fresh. 

Links:
Rock Bar, San Francisco: http://www.rockbarsf.com
The Farmer and the Cook, Ojai: http://farmerandcook.com
White Rabbit, Oxnard: www.whiterabbitcafeLA.com

stay tuned as my Ventura adventures continue...