Oh my, but I am behind on my bloggy goings-on this week.  I am blaming last Monday.  It was the worst.  It completely threw off my equlibrium for the rest of the week.  The best to understand what Monday was like would be to imagine you were in a production of the Vagina Monologues, only it was meant to make you feel bad about yourself, and also was written by Kafka.  And there you would have my Monday afternoon, indeed, the worst possible Monday afternoon.  And then Tuesday was also shitty, mostly because Monday’s shittiness was lingering in the form of an insistent headache, and then Wednesday was less shitty, but only because I very firmly insisted that Things Could Not Be Any Worse, So Today Will Indeed Be Better.  And it was.  I finished all of my work by 10:00 tonight and then sat down and watched a warm, feel good movie about revenge.  And now things are relatively pretty good.  And tomorrow I get to see the Raincoats play, which is totally wonderful.

But suffice it to say that I have been feeling dispirited.  And when I feel dispirited, I get homesick and spend a lot of time sitting around with a bottle of wine and my Portable Dorothy Parker, which clearly is a recipe for a lot of bitter laughter, and really establishes a set of conditions under which nobody should be allowed to blog, and so I didn’t, lest I tell the internet anything regrettable.

So in honor of my not-very-good week, here’s a beautiful, sad song about being mopey and Canadian in Los Angeles. How about that dreary descending bass line, kids?  I tell ya.

The Lisa Marr Experiment, In California:

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And Neko Case covers it, in gloriously navel-gazing fashion:

Neko Case, In California

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And because I miss Canada, by association I miss warm cozy winter coats.   I have a really impressive collection of vintage winter coats that languish in my parents basement.  The weirdest thing about living in California has been the way the seasons, or lack thereof, completely screws up my sense of time.  This is not a complaint about the weather, because I hate snow.  But the constancy of the seasons makes it hard for me to really comprehend what time of year it actually is – like, my parents told me they’re calling for snow at home next week, while, just over a week ago, it was so hot here that I went outside and thought I was going to have a heart attack.  I find it really difficult to understand that it is, in fact, October.  But I think what really makes my grasp on temporality so elusive is the light – while the temperature does remain fairly consistent here, apart from the almost unbearable heat for a few weeks in the summer, and the one or two weeks (typically coinciding with people visiting me from Canada) when it rains steadily in December or January, it’s the way the daylight remains constant and unchanging that is strangely disconcerting.  David Lynch said something once about how the light in Los Angeles is what makes the city so perfect for filmmaking, and it’s true.  I even maintain that pictures of me that were taken in Los Angeles look significantly better than pictures taken elsewhere.  But another thing the light is good for is making me forget what month it is.  And I love the way the sunlight looks on the hills when I’m walking up to Sunset to catch the bus, but that’s why I still rejoice on those rare overcast days.

So instead of dresses, today, some winter coats, that would never do in Los Angeles sunshine, for when you’re in California, dreaming of snow:

The most glorious coat that ever was, from A-hem Vintage on Etsy.

Also gorgeous, also from A-Hem Vintage.

And because the coat I miss most of all, is my floor-length, blue velvet coat with purple buttons, two gorgeous blue coats:

From Cheesecake Vintage,

Most amazing collar detail!  from SkivvyLuLu Vintage.