Dear reader,
There’s a Pomeranian-Spitz dog sitting to my right, and I can imagine a pomegranate spritz in my left hand as the deep Spring makes itself known.
LAX airport is calm today.
I lint-rolled my black fringe jacket, and yet my dog Jack’s cream fur (a Spitz mix himself) sticks to it — I love that he’s here with me.
LA has always felt like home to me, but it also has a way of getting me to ask myself questions about my relationships to creativity, to money, and to ambition. Am I under any obligation to be who I was yesterday, if it’s not serving me or others today?
All of my Women Drivers on Uber roll up in Tesla Model Y SUVs. I’m headed to South LA, en route to The University of Southern California.
At a stop sign, a little boy initiated a round of peek-a-boo from the window. His face crinkled into the cutest smile when we met eyes.
The streets were peppered with jacaranda trees and their lavender haze. The classic bougainvillea of SoCal were in full bloom. It’s truly amazing to me. I just saw bougainvillea in full bloom in the tropics (Maldives + Kerala, India), a totally different climate than the Mediterranean climate here. I think there just might be a lesson in here about how you are who you are in every place. You can bloom anywhere you want to. You can’t help but bloom everywhere you are. You must choose to bloom everywhere you go.
It was LA Asian Pacific Film Festival week and I got to go to the Director’s Guild on Sunset to support a friend’s worldwide premiere of her film “Hoop Like This.” It’s a beautiful telling of the stories of brown ballers from all over coming together as a team to showcase the culture, their resilience, and their ability on the court while living dual lives in other demanding professions. She powerfully captured how the game belongs to us all. You already belong. Now, go dunk on ‘em!
In a world that can feel pretty exclusionary and siloed, it’s a blessing to witness stories that remind us that yes, though society can be very unfair, if you step back, if you step up, this life we’re living is all one playing field. A couple days later, I was walking through Beverly Hills when the exclusive Milken Institute Global Conference was going on at the Waldorf Astoria and Beverly Hilton hotels, where the new Aman One complex is being constructed for 2027. The sidewalks were blocked off, every restaurant in the vicinity was closed to the public for private events. The glaring message is that you are only worthy of hospitality if you can pay $$$$ for it.
The more I live the more I believe that the point of life isn’t to pay for invitations, but to use your time to create. To use your time to cultivate villages and communities. I’ve found that that’s where hospitality lives. I personally am tickled by the fact that ‘hospital’ and ‘hotel’ share a Latin root: hospes, meaning guest. It’s all right there. My intention is to invite in, to care, not to wait to be invited, and not to wait to be cared for.
I got to practice yoga with friends on a rooftop in Sawtelle. I got to talk to a dear friend about how she became a filmmaker at age 84 and is screening her film in her hometown of New York next week.
I walked from courage bagels in Virgil Village to Los Feliz all the way up to the hills. At the bar at Little Dom’s near Griffith Park, I went for the Italian meatloaf dinner special, it’s divine. I ended up listening and chatting to a seasoned pro next to me about how the craft of feature film post-production requires magic in for magic out. He told me to keep going, keep plugging. And the whole team said to me: “you take your time, honey.” Genuinely heartwarming.
When you come back with fresh eyes, you realize that everything really is magic in, magic out. And you can’t know how all you bring to the table will produce something great. You just have to trust. Wonders can spring up on you.
The wildest part is that, in the past, when I’ve held on harder to goals, they don’t get accomplished. When I surrender, things have a way of aligning without the need for my superfluous effort. The flow state is where the goods happen, it is enough. That is us doing enough.
At Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica, two bi-coastal chef-restauranteurs promoted their new cookbooks and served the freshest plate of whole foods consisting of spicy lentils, hummus, olive oil, vinegar, and coconut-carrot-chocolate bars.
They discussed how what is for you cannot miss you. It may not happen at the time or in the way you think it will. Actually, it won’t happen the way you think, as far as I’ve experienced. But the cosmos conspires. It really does.
You defied the odds by existing. In RAYE’s song Click Clack Symphony. with Hans Zimmer, she reminds us that the odds of being born on this Earth are one in four hundred trillion.
I didn’t know that. We conquered those odds. So by design, we will make what we are meant to make, and we will be who we are meant to be, all in due time. If we let ourselves see it all that way.
If we know when to lock in, if we know when to zoom out.
If we get less precious about the outcome
and
get more sacred with the process.
I’m treasuring this soft tango every day.
With much love & to going beyond the surface,
Anjali
Next week: letting it unfold!