I just don’t know where I Have been. Lost in a dream, moving forward, stepping back, losing myself, finding myself again and just all over the place. I’ve been back in San Francisco for two weeks, to deal with a few things at the shop…get my hair done, check on my house, deal with a traffic ticket and all I can say is I can’t wait to get back to Los Angeles. It’s cold a gloomy outside, yesterday my car got towed and my life in SF is just kind of static. Sometimes I wonder if moving to LA was me running away…but being back here just reminds me that everything in life has an expiration date and my life here has just gone sour.

I have caught up with friends, spent a glorious weekend in Mendocino, hang out with a boy, gotten fed up with said boy, spent time with my shop girls and making sure things are still running smoothly and now I’m ready to get in my car and head back to the sun. Awe I miss you little apartment in LA, I miss my daily juice at Naturewells. I miss my morning hike at Elysian Park. I miss my shopping trips downtown for the store. I miss my weekend trip to all the flea markets. I miss BBQ’s and days spent drinking wine outdoors with friends. I miss reading and painting and searching for a new art studio. This trip has confirmed that LA is my home. 20 years in SF…and now LA has my heart. See you in a few days.

I have been so sick for the past few days. I will not go into the gory details but it’s the sickest I have been for years. The last time I got this sick was right after my divorce and that time I was so ill that I had to cancel a trip to Paris! I was so used to having Mason around to take care of me and I have always had problems asking for help…so for 5 days I laid on my couch, dying, not eating and did not call anyone..and even refused the offers that I had to come by, check on me, bring me supplies. Well not this time. But being in LA I don’t have the support group I did in SF. I mean there are people down here I know would help…but I just feel weird asking. Thanks god one of my besties from SF is now living in LA. I called Caitlen yesterday morning crying after spending the entire night on the floor of my bathroom.

She rushed over with 7-up and saltines and gave me and my poor cooped up dogs some much needed love and attention. I’m feeling marginally better today…but I miss my Mommy, I miss my home and I’m so thankful I have Caitlin down here. There is nothing like having great girlfriends. I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world.

My hair in matted to my head, I have had the same clothes on for three days and I’m afraid I am fusing to my couch. Not feeling very darling at all. Can we just pretend I actually look like this?

I watched the moonrise yesterday. It was still light when she appeared and hovered above the hazy skyline, faded like an old photo washed by the Summer sun. She was a big, translucent pie that I wanted to reach out, grab and greedily gobble up like a starving child. I watched her move and grow and then retreat as the the last bit of dusk was swallowed by darkness.

I had a hard time falling asleep last night. I tossed and turned till Midnight. At 1:40 I was awoken by a light shining powerfully through my window. It was as if a street post had been erected directly outside my room. I felt the gleaming beams as I tried to readjust and shield my eyes from it’s glare. My sleepy mind struggled to recall how brightly lit my room was on other nights as it desperately clung to a cloudy abyss.

The lights intensity forced me my from my sleep, so I stepped out to get a closer look. As the bright light illuminated me, I realized the moon had followed me home. She clung to my windowsill like a crazed cat insisting to be let in. Howling and screaming, she he had grown twice her earlier dusk risen size and intensely cast her cold blue light upon my cheeks.

I wanted to flea the house and run through tall grassy fields and become part of her night glow but felt constrained by my urban dwelling and the unknown that lurked outside my city door. Reluctantly I slipped back in to bed in search of a silent slumber that never came. I woke half rested convinced I am ruled by the moon.

This morning I was browsing through twitter and I was getting caught up on the lives of some of my old friends that I don’t see/talk to much anymore. It’s strange to me that we have these electronic social media outlets that allow us a porthole into a life we once had. It’s so impersonal and it keeps me from picking up the phone to say, “hi, how are you, what’s up with your life? I still think about you.” Instead after a 5 min scroll through, I can feel as if I’m updated enough to skip having any awkward impersonal and forced interactions.

It has become glaringly clear how much my life has changed; how many layers I have shed, exactly how many roads I have chosen not to follow. And here I am. Not exactly where I ever expected to be. My life is so completely different than I imagined it. As a teenager I clung to an image of my adult life, and it got me through, it gave me hope. And I achieved that vision: home, secure job, husband, Volvo in the driveway, tight knit group of besties that I shopped and cocktailed with on Sundays, yet sill I felt like a tiny little ship lost at sea. But here I am 5 years later, and I’m single, I crashed my Volvo, I’m living in an apartment in LA, I can’t remember the last time me and my besties spoke, yet I’m the happiest I have ever been.

I have been reborn, I am a different person but still sometimes I look back and wonder what was the pivotal moment when everything changed? I can’t help wonder if my past has any idea of the Sasha that exists now. This calm, happy, and self actualized work in progress. But that’s the thing about changing, sometimes you have to remove the people that expect you to be a certain way, to really change. You start performing for them. You fall into a roll and it becomes hard to break free. I had outgrown the roll that I cast myself into. The unhappy house wife, the over dramatic, broken hearted cheakster, the silly ninny laughing off her heartache through humor. I was bigger than life, I was the loudest and most vocal in the room and I really convinced myself that this made me strong, this made me something to look up to.

Sometimes I miss my rambunctious and defiant earlier self. She was raw, she was real, she was entertaining, and she served a very important purpose to my growth. She allowed me to deal with all the sadness from my childhood, all the regrets that filled my twenties and ultimately all the disappointment I felt when the vision of my utopia crumpled and revealed itself as a farce. But I have absolved myself of that earlier unneeded baggage. I no longer cling to what was. There are too many new adventures waiting out there, so many interesting characters to meet and so many joy filled moments to experience. The Sasha that I am today can feel and taste and gobble up all the loveliness that this life has to offer. I can feel and love and experience happiness in a way I was unaware possible. But I would not have made it here if it wasn’t for my earlier audacious, outrages, protective incarnation or the people that adored her. So to them and to her I say thank you. You are still loved.

I’m starting to worry how much I like to be alone. When I was younger I constantly wanted to be around people, entertained; stimulated. Now I can think of nothing I would rather do than spend my entire day alone. Today was a good day. I painted, I walked the dogs, I cooked and I did not have to talk on the phone even once.

I stopped reading fashion magazines like two years ago because they made me feel fucking awful. I’m 5’9” a size eight. I work out at least four or five times a week and I eat super healthy, but after looking at airbrushed pictures of 13 year olds I start feeling like a huge unhealthy cow. So I started checking out fashion blogs to get my fashion fix. Real girls, real style and I get a daily dose of style and fashion at BellJar or going to the showrooms etc to shop. But these days being online is like reading fashion mags..it’s just filled with hollow eyed starving looking girls. And sometimes I think I get sucked in and start posting pictures of said girls….and it’s fucking lame. I mean beauty comes in all shapes and sizes but these photos of young girls looking dank and sad and just shells of themselves are just heartbreaking and ugly and it’s so detrimental to our well being. I’m proud to be a happy, healthy rosy cheeked woman with light in her eyes. And all of you girls should be too.

The lovely miss Jemma who just happens to be my neighbor down here in Silverlake had a team of talented youngsters put together this amazing video for the launch of her new line Lykke Wullf, sold at BellJar. I’m in love with her capes made out of amazing Pendalton fabric and other high quality wool felts. The line is named after her adorable mother who I had the pleasure of meeting last month.

LYKKE WULLF from Katelin Arizmendi on Vimeo.

Sometimes I think I’m terribly hard to love. I’m moody, I’m independent, I like to be alone, I’m bossy, I’m a perfectionist and mostly I just have a hard time letting people in.

But lately I have softened. I’m happier, I feel less guarded, I’m exploring the things that really make me happy and peaceful. And all these strange and wonderful people have recently come into my life and they are refusing to acknowledge my imaginary fortress. And I say to them come in, stay for a while, let’s smoke a fag.

The jet lag returning from London has proven to be much worse than upon arriving. When I travel I’m so excited to arrive at my chosen destination that I just power through. But when I returned late Wed night, after what seemed like the longest hardest flight of my entire life, my new roommate had cooked me the most amazing meal. I then crashed at like 10 pm. only to wake at 3 am. I tried desperately to go back to sleep but alas, could not. So I got up and worked at the shop and then went to get my nappy hair fixed post travel. AT the Salon I was falling asleep in the chair. I just kept dosing off and yawning. I was meant to head back to the shop but instead had to go home and pass out. I fell asleep at like 7 last night and then once again woke up at 4 am to ponder such important issues as, should I get eyelash extensions? Seriously, does anyone have am opinion on this? I would really love to wake up to big full eyelashes every morning. I imagine I would always look fresh and glamorous, but do they make your real eyelashes fall out?? This is a very important topic that I need some input on please.

Ok, ok, so when I arrived in London I was aware of how much I still sound like a 13 year old valley girl. I say like, like way too much. I also still use words like hella and totally and sometimes I even drop a mega bomb. So, as soon as I get around British people I start enunciating my words more thoroughly and conjugating my verbs properly and I really think that if I lived there for any extended amount of time that I would end up pulling a Madonna and speaking with a fake British accent. Why do people just sound smarter with an English accent? Sigh. But I will tell you, when Kat was fixing my hair last night at the Salon and talking like a Northern Cali, Marin girl it felt nice to, um, like be back home, like totally.

So after pondering my fake eyelashes and how much more fake I would become if I got them, I started to thinking about facials and then botox and I was wondering if it was too early to get my first facelift (just a tiny one darling) and then I started to think about all the pressures to stay young and beautiful and then I started to get deep and focus on the inner me and how all the rest of that stuff is just masking inner turmoil and that maybe I should just spend more money on hiring a guru or something and really becoming that peaceful happy person I aspire to be, when I said fuckit…make up and hair and clothes make me happy so I’m totally getting a facial and some new boots and probably fake eyelashes. (hows that for the longest run on ever? Imagine what it looks like inside my brain).

I used to argue with my ex-husband about this. He just didn’t understand all my obsessions surrounding vintage clothes and glamour and beauty products and beauty treatments. I honestly think that all of these things extend not from a shallow place but instead form an artistic place. I want everything in my life, all the things that surround me to be beautiful and exciting. This is just part of my basic artistic nature and I really don’t think there is anything shallow about it. I’m just as, if not more concerned with my insides as I am my outside. I probably yammer on more on my blog about my feelings and my personal growth than I ever do beauty products. Anyway, yes I am spiritual and all that beauty and confusion and the massive ball of emotion that I feel inside is directly related to how I aesthetically live my life as well as my personal style.

Anyway I digress, after thinking about all this I checked my mail and got a really sad message from my friend Henry from the UK. We were trying desperately to hook up and say goodbye but it just never happened. Fate worked against us and we didn’t get to say goodbye. He wrote me the sweetest message expressing how sad he was about this fact and now I have both jet lag and a bit of the blues; just a tad bit.

I feel so blessed for all the connections and friendships I have made as I have traveled, and this is a great thing to be feeling sad about. Especially as I know I will see my dear Henry again and we will have many more adventures in our lifetimes, both separately and together.

Also left behind my dear Scarlett. We spent our days sitting by a fire in Forest Hill, running through the streets of Brick-lane, drinking a ton of red wine and shopping our little hearts out. I stayed at her Fathers house…and it was freezing in London. I mean freezing. We managed to make it out most days driven by our desire to shop and have fancy lunches but often could not be bothered to go back onto the cold at night. He father Joe cooked for us almost every night and we all stayed up late chatting and drinking and sitting by the fire. It was one of the mellowest and happiest vacations I have ever been on.

I am posting a few pictures below…Most of which Miss Scarlett took…check out her blog at Shades of Scarlett over on tumbler…and a few that I took. Xo darlings…see you tonight over at the BellJar San Francisco Magazine launch party.

A few weeks back I was in San Francisco and I was at BellJar doing some work. I was sitting in my office, which is directly behind the cash wrap and I could hear the girls chatting as they made their purchases. I overheard two women speaking to Cydney. They asked how I was doing in LA and they mentioned that they followed my Blog and kept up on my whereabouts. Cydney told them I was fine and loving LA. Then one of them said, “Is she happy? IS she ok? Her blog is so funny and so sad.”

It was so interesting hearing someone’s perspective of how I am perceived based on my writing. I always think of myself witty and glamorous and just a wee bit over emotional and terribly over dramatic. But yes, I went back and I re-read a bunch of my posts and I guess I do come off as a bit sad. And yes some day’s I am sad. But mostly I would say, I have the most beautiful and amazing life…I literally wake up most days and just thank my lucky stars to have made my way through my crazy existence to end up where I am now. I feel so free and I feel so artistically fulfilled. I feel that I have weeded out many of the negative factors/people in my life and am now left with a select group of wondrous and like-minded adventurers.

And I feel like the people that are drawn to me, all the crazy interesting new characters that keep popping up are all rewards for living my life so honestly and with so much passion.

But I am human, and I am terribly sensitive and I have my bad days. And I guess when I feel blue it makes me feel better to write, to emote and to share; to connect with others through my words. So I suppose here on this blog is a graveyard of Sasha’s bad days, but if you can read between the lines, there is always a message of hope and definitely a message of love. I am blessed, you are blessed; we are blessed.