Castaways

Yesterday, my friend of 23 years took me out for a belated birthday lunch at the Castaway in Burbank. This is a place where you go for the views.

The view here is to the southwest overlooking Burbank, Forest Lawn and Griffith Park (the hills in the distance). At night it's all lit up (not the hills) and if you look more west than south you can pick out Disney, Warner Brothers and Universal studios. The 101 freeway is easy to spot, flowing like red and white water.

But you'll have to imagine all that. Our two-day heat wave is over and yesterday was cool and misty. The hills were like description in a story--not central to the action but complimentary, a setting or a mood. If it's true, as the Irish author Anne Enright says, that "all description is an opinion about the world," then yesterday those hills looked like they hadn't changed in 23 years, except after all this time they're even more green.