Heretofore Unreported Joy

I spent an entire weekend cross-legged on the kitchen counter-top in Jolie's Edwardian home in San Francisco, wrapped in a conversation that was as heartening as it was disorienting -- about art and solitude and self-engendered inspiration. I returned to Los Angeles stirred and uneasy. Angel Island was on fire as I left the Bay, and the Porter Ranch was on fire as I passed the Angeles National Forest on the 5, entering LA County. Something was on fire inside of me, but there is no describing, measuring or containing that fire.

Back in LA, I immediately walked to Griffith Park; the sooner I could come home, the better. I ambled up the hill, up the dirt path that leads halfway to the Observatory, walked down the pavement driveway, shook a fist at the millionaire's house when I saw the lock and chain on the gate from the park to Glendower (last year, there was an open passage, then a gate that opened and closed, now a lock and chain). I slid down the side of the paved driveway to where the fence ended (a couple of coyotes below) and climbed back up the side of the hill, and as I was doing this the millionaire's front door opened. But instead of the millionaire, a housekeeper walked out. I nodded to her; she looked either tired or unfriendly, and the thought crossed my mind that pretty soon they will extend the fence further down the hill, and I will have no way of coming through at all except by jumping the fence. I don't know why I should feel entitled to this walking route, but that thought filled me with a profound sense of injustice. Something that was free and open and, somehow, mine was being threatened, I guess.

And then, as I was walking down Glendower, the first heretofore unreported joyful event occurred.

One of my favorite landmarks within my walking periphery, the Ennis-Brown House, is perched on that hill, on the rim where Glendower bends, but the decorated blocks start on the property before it. Which, of course, was once Ennis-Brown House property. At a certain point the wall gives way to the driveway, obstructed loosely by a chain, then the ornate wrought-iron gate, through which I'd caught glimpses of the spectacular view from the terrazzo during the many times I'd passed the house. But this time the chain was gathered to the side and the gate was open. I walked closer, fully prepared to exercise the same level of stealth that had been required in -- apparently -- trespassing across the threshold of public park to residential area (I am still not sure if the actual trespassing occurs in front of or behind the gate, or maybe the gate itself is a kind of no-man's-land, like the distance between customs check points). But as I walked onto the terrazzo I noticed a couple of cars parked within the gate. A man in his late fifties, wearing a Dean cap, approached me with a readiness that meant he was mistaking me for someone else, someone he was expecting, who had not arrived. I was alone, with my bottle of electrolyte-enhanced water, and not anyone he was expecting. He introduced himself as Steve, and he was with the Ennis House Foundation. He'd been waiting all day for a camera crew who had booked the place to shoot an ad -- it was at that point after 5PM and they'd been meant to come at 10 in the morning.

After a brief introduction, he took me on a tour of the place.

The house, which was never intended by Frank Lloyd Wright's clients to serve as a regular residence, is like a structure from another world. As is the case with most of his buildings, the exterior gives little indication of the vast space within. It is a combination of stone and light in such a combination that the stone, geometric and solid as it is, doesn't seem to obstruct the light at all, but to create a way to receive, channel and shelter it. So that the house seems to be built as much of light as of stone. Less a place where you can live, and more a post from which you can imagine yourself some kind of god or hawk or gargoyle looking down on the humming, blinking spectacle below. The two corner windows in the giant, main room (to call it a dining room would be inaccurate -- think more of the scene in Blade Runner when Deckard interviews Rachael, think of the quality of the light in there, the smoke curling up from the crazy, red gloss of her lips -- that room was made less for dining and more for blade runners' interrogations of sexy replicants) are bevelled to provide an unobstructed view. The shades of color in the stained glass vary, lighter at the bottom to increasing saturation, so as to mirror the changing of the light in the evening.

There are ways to leave the planet in every city -- cruising through Rome at night on a motorcycle, for example -- and standing in that house at sunset is one of those portals for Los Angeles. The Ennis House defies the wear and disregard of years, weather, earthquakes, its most recent owner, and the almighty Industry. It is at once a temple and a gargoyle, perched below the bright domes of the Griffith Observatory, seemingly cold and removed, in its way. I had considered it my personal gargoyle, but having seen the inside, I now think of it as a guardian gargoyle, a strange mechanism built for capturing light, for fabricating dreams and delusions of grandeur.