more grimy hollywood.
or: grimy hollywood adjacent.
i know, i go on and on about the ‘hidden in plain sight’ aspect of dirty l.a.
to wit: that you can be walking down the grimiest street in los angeles, working under the assumption that everything around you is unrelentingly grimy, but be amazed to find that countless odd and beautiful and remarkable buildings and homes and, in this case, monasteries can be inches away from you, hidden in plain sight.
within a few hundred yards of this monastery you could buy: gas, tacos, class-a narcotics, dusty antiques, pilates lessons, more class-a narcotics, and etc.
or you could walk onto the grounds of this monastery and buy banana bread made by the monks and/or nuns (ok, maybe it’s a convent, i’m not sure, to be honest).
and when i took this picture there was a ginormous traffic jam on the 101, just a few dozen yards away.
but here on the little monastery (or convent) all was quiet and still.
it’s a monastery (or convent) hidden in the middle of grimy hollywood. and it’s a beautiful, sylvan, quiet, bucolic (which might be the same as ‘sylvan’, or just a little bit different) monastery (or convent).
there’s a long and odd and amazing history of different religious and spiritual groups settling in hollywood. from catholics to theosophists to scientologists to buddhists to 7th day adventists to satanists to presbyterians to jews to muslims to snake handlers and etc.
the scientologists tend to have the gaudiest and most ubiquitous buildings, whereas clearly the catholic monks(or nuns)have the most concealed
and restrained building(s). at least as regards this monastery (or convent).
so, here’s hollywood at it’s loveliest and most random.
-moby
