Pina

This morning I’m scheduled to meet my new friend at John Mason’s house in Glendale on West Kenneth Road, to see if John can repair the trumpet that my friend inherited from his uncle. John Mason is a French horn player with a repair shop in his garage, who I found by googling “French horn repair” a few years ago, and he’s fixed my French horn once ever since. As I drive towards the mountains after exiting the 5 freeway, Glendale is covered in a thick white fog, which looks particularly beautiful from Western avenue with its extra high palm trees slowly swaying and its sidewalks covered in purple jacaranda flowers. Most everything is white, green and purple, the buildings, the sky, the trees and the flowers, with deep gradients spanning each hue and ending in the same thick white fog. Glendale always gives me this particular feeling I can't quite pinpoint, something majestic but so California-casual at the same time. When I turn left on West Kenneth road to get to John’s house, I'm so pleased to find that his street is also covered in fallen jacarandas as far as the eye can see. I park my car in front of John’s house atop a perfect oval-shaped bed of flowers, indicating that no one must have parked there overnight. I’m early so I sit in my car listening to the hip-hop radio, before deciding to get out and walk back and forth on John’s block for a few minutes, from jacaranda bed to jacaranda blanket. I turn around and see a young man approaching from far away on the other side of the street atop a hoverboard, his hands casually stuck in the pockets of his electric blue tracksuit, big wireless headphones on his head, and his eyes looking far ahead of him, slicing through the endless jacaranda adorned sidewalk.

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