Storm is coming in…

If these palms look familiar they’re the same ones that were shot for my book jacket. Where do you capture this angle? From the roof of my house.

Sometimes I like to shove the computer away, drop the novel I’m currently working on, and climb. Climb up and see what’s going on in the world. To that end I hike the hills, or in this particular instance, the stairs to a landing where one of the windows opens under the eves. You can scoot out and stand on one level of the roof, a flat bit that isn’t covered with terracotta tile, and see clear to downtown L.A., the San Gabriel mountains, and the Hollywood Hills. From this spot on the roof I’ve watched both mountains and hills burn, the Space Shuttle fly so close I felt I could almost touch it, the Perseid meteor showers, and on the 4th of July there are times I just stay here and watch the fireworks shimmer over the basin from home.

Today I remember an old friend. He is my age, his mom was an actress, his dad was a colleague of my father’s. We were kind of an odd pair. I was a tiny mite of a girl, and he was a very big boy. We went to different schools, but we were crazy about each other, and part of that fascination had to do with “Star Trek.” In the 1970s he was a Trekkie. Before he had his license his father would drive him to the conventions, and he would come home and tell me all about them. He had autographs from the cast, and told gripping stories about meeting Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. He had posters up in his room, and in the basement he had constructed a miniature set, a model of the Star Ship Enterprise hung by nylon filament against a drape of black Duvetyne. I remember the set he constructed very well, and remember the 16mm films he made — not at all.

By the 1980s he had left home, gone to college, and begun a career in Silicon Valley, an early entry into the world of computers — perhaps shaped by an expansive view of the future, supplied by a funny old science fiction show. We lost touch in the 1990s. Yet I imagine, today, our thoughts are in the same place.

LLAP

Nimoy’s family asks that donations be made in his memory to the Everychild Foundation, P.O. Box 1808, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272; the COPD Foundation, 20 F Street NW, Suite 200-A, Washington DC 20001; Beit T’Shuvah treatment center, 8831 Venice Blvd. Los Angeles, 90034; or the Bay-Nimoy Early Childhood Center at Temple Israel of Hollywood, 7300 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles 90046.

 

via Leonard Nimoy dies: Fans mourn Nimoy and Spock too – LA Times.