KT painted her favorite mug. The painting and all her belongings were destroyed by the fire.
By KRISHNA THANGAVELU
I always wonder at people who are happy with a basic aesthetic that can be easily replaced. Basic knives with black plastic handles? I missed my colored ones. When I remember them.
We are living a life after death… easy does it.
My own consolation is I had so many beautiful and carefully chosen things, in such abundance, that it is hard for me to miss it all at once. The pain is generally small and prickly and then gone. Loved and lost…
And now I remember one of my favorite coffee mugs. I painted it some years ago… alas both mug and paintings are gone. It’s really too much beauty to mourn. The Salvation Army will give me more inspiration…
The desires of my heart came and went in great abundance. The crisis we find ourselves in is a lot like going down a waterfall… so hard to grasp onto any one thing at all.
(Editor’s note: Krishna Thangavelu lived in Tahitian Terrace, which was close-knit community of people over 50. Across from the Pacific Ocean, it was one of the sites of affordable housing in the Palisades. She was also active in the community and received a Community Council Golden Sparkplug award in 2021 for her efforts in organizing the community’s opposition to the proposal to turn Will Rogers State Beach into a site for homeless housing.)
I also have fleeting thoughts of things I treasured. My grandchildren’s artwork and sweet love notes to me, gifts from my son-in-law that were his family heirlooms, my mother recently gave me my childhood photo albums that she spent years putting together, it goes on and on. My little Marquezp neighborhood – my pharmacy (Knolls), Ronny’s and fries on Friday with my grandchildren after school, my beloved Vet, our new neighbors, Prana and The Grey Dragon (also a Friday destination with grandchildren), Baked Pasta and Pasta Carbonara at Vittorio’s. Trick or Treating on Bollinger, giving out spider plants on Halloween – my beautiful gigantic spider plant is gone. My life was lost in so many ways. Now that I have moved six times, various places around L.A. I realize even more how we had our sequestered neighborhood that isolated us from a lot of the frantic aspects of neighboring communities. This has been a loss that most people will not experience. No matter what happens, I will not recover – I may move on, but the loss is deep.