Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: My ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ life failed. Would returning to L.A. work out this time?
I had just slipped back into bed after our infant daughter’s 4 a.m. feeding when my partner, Sean, turned over and said, “We should go now. I smell smoke.”
Our air-quality monitor leaped from green to yellow. My breath dried my throat.
We hadn’t gotten an evacuation notice yet. “Let’s wait a bit,” I said, as if staying in bed meant the Eaton fire wasn’t real.
In L.A.’s brittle landscape of concrete rectangles and choking freeways, Eaton Canyon, just seven miles from where we live, was a sanctuary to thousands of people. It saved my life many times. And it was now ablaze, with the fire spreading rapidly.
From our dark bedroom, we scanned our phones for information, zooming in and out of the slow-loading Cal Fire evacuation map. The red perimeter pushed against the yellow warning zone that our Eagle Rock house fell under.
The evening before, I’d reported the burned acreage aloud to my partner as LAist updated its website: “400 acres, zero containment.” Then, “800 acres, zero containment,” my voice trembling as if the burn map was of my own skin. The next morning the number of acres on fire had reached the thousands.
I looked at pictures we’d taken at Eaton Canyon on New Year’s Day, a week before the fire: Our baby wrapped against my chest smiling her toothless grin; my feet planted in the stream.
The Arroyo Seco, “dry stream” in Spanish, comes down from the San Gabriel Mountains in Angeles National Forest and runs along the two-lane freeway in Pasadena. In the last few years, this oft-parched waterway gained depth because of unprecedented rainfall. Three inches of water became three feet, and swimming holes appeared.
Eaton Canyon trail hikers showed up in their bathing suits, carrying towels. A waterfall and swimmable creek nestled in a shady canyon is a Southern California unicorn. And it welcomed dogs!
During the pandemic, families, tiny day-camper explorers and the public en masse hit the trails in their masks and basketball sneakers; it suddenly felt like Disneyland. Portable speakers drowned out the creek music. The litter irritated me, as did waiting in line to log-cross the creek. But the crowds also meant something important: Eastside Angelenos had a place to put their fear and worries during a time when we were afraid just to breathe.
I’d started hiking the Altadena trails after my divorce a decade earlier. I offered my loneliness and heartbreak to the live oaks and sycamores, refuse they could make into something useful the same way they convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. Nature became my refuge. It gobbled up my sorrows with its gaping mouth of everything-ness.
I’d start on a trail, breathe in the sweet sage brush and dust and feel myself fall into a harmonic unfolding that had nothing to do with me personally.
With the end of my marriage, California’s raging drought and wildfires and the impending 2016 elections, I fled to Berlin. At the time, I didn’t know how to grow a new life for myself in L.A. The brown hills past the 134 Freeway made me lonely. I bolted to a city of more verdant environs. Green meant hope.
When I returned a year later, the man I had not voted for was still president, my “Eat, Pray, Love” experiment had notably failed and I was certain that, at 38, I’d never find love again or have children. I showed up at the Arroyo most days, sometimes to a half-dry, cracked creek bed. I realized then that nature feeds us in two ways. The first is through recreation and adventure. The other is when we are grappling with the unknown and surrounded by chaos. Then, nature presents its cycles as consolation, reminding us that, whatever is happening, we can rely on things to change.
Eventually, the drought passed, as did the one in my heart. The waterfall went from trickle to spout. I baptized my pregnant belly in the Arroyo waters. I would bring my new-mother-overwhelm there. And 12 days after her birth, I introduced my newborn to the Arroyo, beaming as though she was meeting a grandparent. I wanted to show her what I learned: that we are never alone among the tadpoles, silt and stones, that we belong to nature too.
As the Eaton fire raged, lashing palm trees and devouring the Craftsmans of our L.A. neighbors, our daughter slept in her bassinet, unaware of airborne toxins. Sean and I shoved her rompers and sleep sacks into a backpack, rummaged through our clothes and grabbed enough underwear for an indeterminable amount of time away. I scooped my jewelry into a shoebox with my passport. We dressed for the day, then returned to bed for a couple of hours of fitful sleep, ready to go when we needed to.
Sean looked at me as if I had lost my mind when I grabbed the dog’s leash at 7 a.m., opened our door to a screen of tawny haze and pulled our confused pet behind me. A thin, rusty coil of sun smoldered through a patch in the clouds.
The nursery rhyme that goes “Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children are gone” cruelly repeated in my head. It’s all going to be gone, I thought with a shudder.
By 9 a.m., we were sitting in evacuation traffic on the 5 Freeway, heading to family in Orange County. The fire had not jumped the freeway into Eagle Rock, but an evacuation warning appeared on my phone beside dozens of frantic texts from my San Marino moms group: “Don’t come to Joshua Tree! Power’s out. No gas or groceries!,” “Unsafe water alert for Pasadena!” and a slew of links to resources for formula, diapers and wipes.
With our daughter and dog, Sean and I shuttled back and forth between my mother-in-law’s and parents’ houses for the next two weeks. I downloaded the Environmental Protection Agency’s air-quality app. I still keep careful watch on the stats. Now we’re back in our house and the fires have ceased, but we no longer open the windows when cooking for fear of polluted air. Instead of off-leash sloshing up the Arroyo, I take the baby and dog to the park and worry because neither of them can wear masks. Once again, life feels chaotic. I’m afraid to breathe.
I know healthy forests need regular burnings, but it is not natural for whole communities to be leveled overnight, for fire insurers to abandon their patrons and for people to lose their homes and what they love most about living in them.
I tell myself that nature’s gift in hard times is to remind us of its perpetual cycles. Today it is raining. The air will be breathable again one day. Spring will come, but I don’t know if there will be green leaves this year in the canyon.
The author is a writer, educator and mother who’s working on a memoir. She’s on Instagram: @sophiecsills
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
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The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
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Abriana Vicioso is the host of the Flower Hour, which takes place monthly.
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
Each flower carries a personal history. For Abriana Vicioso, the calla lily was her parents’ wedding flower — a symbol of her mother’s beauty. “She had this big, beautiful white calla lily in her hair,” Vicioso says. “I love my parents. They’re the reason I’m here. I’ll never forget where I came from.”
The Flower Hour begins with Vicioso announcing, with a warm smile: “Today is about touching grass.” The florist-by-trade gestures behind her to hundreds of flowers contained in buckets — blue thistles, ivory anemones and calla lilies painted silver — all twisted and unfurling into the air. “Tonight is going to be so sweet and intimate,” Vicioso says, eyeing the beautiful chaos at her feet. A grin buds across her face.
Moments before the workshop, participants sit at candlelit tables exchanging horoscopes and comparing their favorite flowers. A mention of the illustrious bird-of-paradise flower elicits coos and awe from the women. Izamar Vazquez, who is from Jalisco, Mexico, reveals her fondness for roses, which make her feel connected to her Mexican roots.
Vicioso hosts her flower-themed wellness workshop near the iconic Original Los Angeles Flower Market in downtown L.A. In January, the first Flower Hour event sold out, prompting her to make it a monthly series. Vicioso describes the event as a “three-part journey” where participants are invited to drink herbal tea, smoke rose-petal-rolled cannabis joints and create a floral arrangement. “The guide is to connect with the medicine of flowers,” Vicioso says.
Rose petal joints, tea and flower arranging are all part of The Flower Hour event’s offerings.
The event is hosted at the Art Club, a membership-based co-working space. “The Flower Hour is really beautiful. Everyone gets to explore their creativity while meeting new people,” says Lindsay Williams, the co-owner of the Art Club.
The idea for Flower Hour came to Vicioso during a conversation with her mother. “We joke all the time that flowers were destined to make their way into my life,” she says. She works as a florist and models on the side, even appearing in the pages of Vogue. Vicioso grew up in a Caribbean household, where flowers and offerings were part of daily life. “In my culture and religion, a lot of my family practices — an Afro-Caribbean religion — we build altars.”
Like many cultures, flowers carry sentimental value in her religion. “I’m Caribbean, so a lot of my family practices a Yoruba religion, which comes from Africa. In the Caribbean, it’s well known as Santería.”
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After a difficult year and a breakup, Vicioso wanted to marry her love of flowers with community building. Because Vicioso uses cannabis medicinally, the workshop naturally includes a smoking component. “My family has smoked cannabis for a lot of reasons for a long time. It’s a really healing plant,” she explains.
In the workshop, even the cannabis gets the floral treatment. Vicioso presents her rose-petal-wrapped joints on a silver platter at each table. She rolled each by hand. “If you’ve never smoked a rose-petal-rolled joint, the difference with this is it’s going to have roses that have a slight tobacco effect,” she announces.
During the workshop, Vicioso stresses the importance of buying cannabis from local vendors. The cannabis provided was purchased from a Northern Californian vendor. The wellness workshop aims to reclaim the healing ritual of smoking cannabis. “This is a plant that has been commercialized,” Vicioso says. “There’s a lot of Black and Brown people who are in jail for this plant.”
The resulting workshop is what Vicioso describes as “an immersive wellness experience that is the intersection of wellness, creativity, community and an appreciation of flowers.” The workshop serves as a reminder to enjoy Earth’s innate beauty in the form of flowers — including cannabis. “It’s this gift that the universe gave us for free and that I have this deep connection with,” Vicioso says.
Conversation cards to generate discussion among participants (top, letf). The workshop serves as a “third space” for Angelenos to engage in tactile creativity and community building outside of traditional nightlife settings.
After enjoying lavender chamomile tea and smoking a joint, Vicioso introduces the flowers to the group before inviting them to pick their own. She emphasizes each flower’s personality traits, describing green dianthus as a “Dr. Seuss” plant. Then, there are calla lilies with their “main character moment.” It gets personal. “Start thinking of a flower in your life that you can discover,” she says. “If you’re feeling like you need inspiration, you can always remember that these flowers have stories.”
Vicioso infuses wisdom into her instruction on floral arrangements: There are no mistakes. Let the flowers tell you where they want to go, she urges. Intuition will be your guide — the wilder, the better.
“Hecho in Mexico” reads a sticker on a bunch of green stems. “Like me,” says Vazquez with a laugh. “They’re all doing their own thing. Like a family,” she says later, arranging stems.
The Flower Hour participants and Vicioso, center, chat as they build their own floral arrangements at the sold-out event.
Two participants — Vazquez and Rebeca Alvarado — are friends who run a floral design company together called Izza Rose. Like Vicioso, the friends have a connection to flowers through their Latin American culture. They met Vicioso in the floral industry and were overjoyed to discover her workshop.
“This is a great way to connect with other people,” says Vazquez.
Alvarado agrees, adding: “You’re getting to know people outside of going to bars. You can connect in different ways when there’s an activity.”
Vazquez uses flowers to stay connected to her Mexican heritage, adding that she prefers to support Mexican vendors. In recent months, the downtown L.A. flower market has struggled to recover from ongoing ICE raids. “Some are scared to come back,” says Vazquez.
Hand-rolled cannabis joints wrapped in rose petals are presented on a silver platter at The ArtClub (top, right). The Flower Hour aims to reclaim the healing rituals of cannabis and flowers.
Another participant, Barbara Rios, was attracted to the workshop for stress relief. “You can hang out with your friends, but it’s nice to do things with your hands,” she says. “I work a stressful job, and it’s nice to have that third space that we’re all craving.”
On this February night, the participants were predominantly women, save for one man. In the future, Vicioso hopes that more men learn to engage with flowers. “There’s a statistic about men receiving flowers for the first time at their funerals, and I think we have changed that,” she says.
To conclude the workshop, Vicioso encourages participants to build lasting friendships and incorporate flower arranging into their daily practice — even if it’s just with a small, inexpensive bouquet.
“Get some flowers together, go to the park, hang out with each other and hang out with me,” she says. Participants leave with flower arrangements in hand. In the darkness of the night air, it briefly looks as though the women carry silver calla lilies that are blooming from their palms.
An underwater view shows US’ Lilly King competing in a heat of the women’s 200m breaststroke swimming event during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Paris La Defense Arena in Nanterre, west of Paris, on July 31, 2024. (Photo by François-Xavier MARIT / AFP) (Photo by FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT/AFP via Getty Images)
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This week’s show was recorded in Bloomington, Indiana with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis, Not My Job guest Lilly King and panelists Alonzo Bodden, Josh Gondelman, and Faith Salie. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
Who’s Bill This Time
State of the Union is Hot; The Tribal Council Convenes Again; A Glow Up In the Doll Aisle
Panel Questions
The Toot Tracker
Bluff The Listener
Our panelists tell three stories about a travel hack in the news, only one of which is true.
Not My Job: Olympic Swimmer Lilly King answers our questions about Lil’ Kings
Olympic Swimmer Lilly King plays our game called, “Lilly King meet these Lil’ Kings” Three questions about short kings.
Panel Questions
Cleaning Out The Cabinet; Bedtime Stacking
Limericks
Bill Kurtis reads three news-related limericks: Getting Cozy With Cross Country Skiing; Pickleball’s New Competition; Bees Get Freaky
Lightning Fill In The Blank
All the news we couldn’t fit anywhere else
Predictions
Our panelists predict, after American Girls, what’ll be the next toy to get an update.
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