Rebirth in Los Angeles

A lyrical travel guide, an instruction manual for a specific kind of day, a thematic bottle episode in your life

How To Be Reborn

PROLOGUE: Read this First

I have wanted to write this guide many times, and have always tried to peg it to a part of the calendar specifically resonant with re-birth.

When I was failing to write the guide in the winter I’d think, “Just hang on till New Years.” When I missed the beginning of January (named for Janus “the ancient Roman god of beginnings & endings, temporal transitions, time, duality, doorways and passages”), I’d queue up the guide for February, the beginning of the lunisolar calendar, celebrated as Chinese New Year. A hard reset feels even more important then, when you’ve reached official kill-yourself weather. If I missed that, I’d be able to catch Nowruz (“new day”), the Persian New Year celebrated in Iran and Central Asia around Mid-March, the ritual of “shaking the dust” — a form of spring cleaning. Then there’s Ramadan and Eid and Lent and Easter…

If I miss any of those I ultimately have to wait through the summer, when no one is expecting to start over because the world is too fecund, too languid with pleasure to engage in any real excavation (while there are tomatoes to pick from the VINE?! No). I have to wait until the earth spins a little longer and the mornings are starting to cool and the leaves start to yellow and crisp and a part of your body knows you’ll die one day. THUS begins the New Year celebration I am most shaped by, the one that always felt the truest to my Libra-born heart…. Rosh Hashana and then Yom Kippur, which arrives precisely at peak Back to School Time. The autumnal equinox is when a devotee would start making preparations for the hunker, the seasonal death, the hibernal chrysalis, which let’s just be honest, is the Jewish orientation, your rebirth comes before the darkest hour, the longest night — “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad shoes.”

I have been through hardship, frustration, wells of depression, sometimes worse…apathy that hardens into anhedonia. There are many schools of thought on how to pull oneself from these pits, but I have found that ritual is the correct combination of shock and balm. Ritual is the way we’ve purified any yuck since the ancients. Honestly, I can’t guarantee results. But I’ve done combinations of this for as long as I can remember, hoping, hoping, hoping that one day something real would change. That someday I would be reborn. I’d be born with my bones and sense and history but I’d be given a blank page, a clean set of sheets, a second chance to be me, differently. Fresh. So I will recount exactly what I did, in the hopes that you too have this experience. Begin a poem like you’re talking to a friend, end it like you’re speaking to the dead.

DIP OR DIVE

Bluff Cove Trail, Palos Verdes Estates, CA 90274

In the way that dance is personal, so is the way one interacts with the ocean. My sympathies go out to those who find it scary (there’s sharks! 75% of the world’s volcanos are in there! vengeful orcas!). You start at the ocean because everything starts at the ocean—the oldest bath, the first womb. Don’t try to negotiate with the cold, embrace the bandaid rip. Pick a one-word drishti, cheesy as that might sound (mine was “begin”). Take three deep breaths at the edge, and on the third walk in. Submerge fully, holding your breath as you go under water. Say your word until you run out of breath, then come up, gasping like a newborn.

GO TO THE CAR WASH

Sunset Car Wash, 7955 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90046

Pull in, put your car in neutral, cue up a playlist, I’ve made one for you here.

A car is filled with loose candy, empty coffee cups, dead leaf dust, boot-stomped receipts and orphan ear buds, clothes to be donated (do that), wipers that need to be changed (Youtube how to do that). Listen to this sound bath as you go through the whooshing brushes, then spend your time vacuuming every crevice, wiping down every mirror and surface (pay attention to the mats and steering wheel, they’re both always filthy). *Pro-est of pro tips* : Generously spray the inside with this PROTECTION SPRAY from the totally fitting Aromadivina.

And when you’re done, place your dirty laundry bag back into a perfectly clean trunk.

(If you do not have a car, substitute this step with a bike scrub, a pedicure or washing down your stoop with a bucket of suds and a dash of cinnamon. The point isn’t the car, but the vessel which carries you over a threshold and bestowing it with the care and dignity such a role deserves.)

DO LAUNDRY

Milt & Edie’s, 4021 W Alameda Ave, Burbank, CA 91505

There’s no point in coming back a milk-pure soul with dirty underwear and greasy sheets. You have to have fresh dish towels and socks and your favorite T-shirt ready to wear. Milt & Edie’s is 24/7, an asset the wardrobe departments in Hollywood have relied on for decades, with alterations available 365 days a year, since 1946. Hand off to an expert what you cannot manage alone, otherwise use a gentle detergent on cold with an extra rinse. When you get your finery back, wear it within the week, don’t be stingy with specialness, dollop it on the day to day.

GO TO THE BOTANICA

Nu-Botanics, 1307 S Alvarado St, Los Angeles, CA 90006

The store is smarter than you, just let it happen. Pick something for protection, something for attraction and something for clearing, don’t overthink it (I tend to think the difference between an oil, a sachet, a candle, a jar or amulet really boils down to aesthetics and lifestyle.). Take your items home in a brown paper bag (from experience this seems to be non-optional), and treat them like a spell kit; unwrap, light, sprinkle, pour.

Not near a botanica? Order online! Or, idk, improvise? A bodega candle, spritzable rosewater, a good rock, a found feather, a bundle of herbs tied with string. The point isn’t provenance, it’s participation.

BUY A NEW BOOK

The Iliad Bookshop, 5400 Cahuenga Blvd, North Hollywood, CA 91601

In the Iliad, the store, the clutter, the stacks are like the stripes of some gigantic rhizomatic turtleneck, the spines a kind of endless brick road that takes you to wherever you want to become, whoever you need to learn to be. There are marble busts of important seeming figures serving as bulwarks to floor piles. There is a magical bathroom, tastefully sponge painted and amateur gilt leafed, that has a cat door so the shop tabbies, Zeus (grey, likely to be patrolling the clearance table) and Apollo (orange, with a penchant for sleeping on boxes with his toes hanging off) can reach their litter box. The sofas are body-sunk and threadbare, the children’s section is ziggzagging with thin hardbacks.

My personal ritual is to do a full lap to get a sense of the ley lines, the options, then inevitably I find myself in A-Z fiction, probably then to reference, or art/photography, then to the children’s section, cookbooks, I will want to check out mystery or sci-fi but i just don’t actually ever care, because they aren’t my sections. I will normally carry one or two books around jealously the whole time, as if they may be snatched up at any moment, as if I’m lucky to have entered at just this moment before the whole world descends on Fiction K-M and picks up Doris Lessing’s book on cats or an out of print biography of a newspaper man.

Secondhand books make me feel like we live within an ecosystem of death and rebirth, a season, a cycle for everything, a time when you are supposed to play a very particular role and things are supposed to intersect with you for their role, one man’s dog-earred, coffee-ringed, marginalia ridden, bath-logged paperback is another woman’s next chapter, turnt page, to be continued. That’s the promise of a new book. You will be improved, you will hold this knowledge, you will be you, but someone who read this book or is reading a book in general.

BUY NEW PENS & PAPER

Staples, 6450 Sunset Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028

There is something so ceremonial and formal about a new pad of paper or a new pen. I love them as little objects of rituals, like incense or coins in a fountain. I love them as wishes stuffed into the cracks of walls, as lovers’ initials carved into a tree. They also fill me with anxiety and that anxiety opens up all of these channels of possibility. A new notebook makes me feel like I could actually get things done — like maybe this is the time when my handwriting will be perfect and when my to-do lists will all have checks next to them or lines through them and maybe my doodles will be drawings. Perhaps I’ll be organized. I’ll have a calendar that I’ll remember to put things in. But I’ve also realized that just writing down anything on a day-to-day basis is an act of generosity towards your future self who will inevitably forget who you ever were at any given time.

While there’s an inclination to go to a fancy stationery shop and get expensive notebooks and Japanese gel pens, Swedish paper clips, Pantone post-it’s, actually Staples has everything you really need and is guaranteed to be around no matter where you live. You need a pack of legal pads and a box of Uniballs in fine tip. It’s there, it’s quick. It’s brightly lit. It has a rewards program and there’s no way to leave it less prepared than you came in.

GO TO THE KOREAN SPA

Wi Spa, 2700 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057

My only two saved wikipedia pages are “interspecies friendship” and “ritual purification.” Every culture has its own variation on the same cycle; heat, cold, water, rest: The Finnish sauna, the Turkish Hamaam, Korean jjimjilbang, Native American sweat lodges. I have trained for the spa, I grew up with the mikvah.

The mikvah is the oldest continuous Jewish ritual still practiced. It’s not a bath, rather a portal. Its rules are arcane and exacting; the water is to be 40 se’ah minimum (about 200 gallons) of living water only, water fed by a spring or from the rain; there are entire treatises on how to break ice and capture snowmelt correctly. Before immersion, a person must clip their nails and cuticles, brush their hair, remove makeup and jewelry; even a knot in one’s hair or a stray eyelash on the skin can be considered a barrier between you, God and the water. Mikvahs are generally used at the end of the menstrual cycle but also before conversion, High Holy Days, marriage and burial. One dip is enough, but three is customary: once for the past, once for the present and once for the future.

Spas are also the places that I’ve been able to see other bodies outside of sex or childhood or taboo. We are all walking around in these meat bags, blood poems. Creatures. We all have pimples, and dimples, and folds and puckers. It helps me appreciate the kind of care I want to bestow upon my own strange and delicate form, the way I would like to care for myself as my own big, happy-to-be here pet.

1. Pack. I recommend bringing: A water bottle instead of 8 billion paper cones that hold less water than your palms would; Megababe Le Tush Butt Mask, the best AHA scrub; Papa Rozier unscented lotion stone, they come in natural fiber carrier pouches; headphones; hoodie.

2. Check in. Pay your fee ($40), they’ll ask whether you’re new or know where to go and for your t-shirt size. In my experience, it’s best to request the largest size they have, I personally want as little touching my skin besides the alchemy of the process.

3. Undress. Fold your arrival clothes and pack them away. Place your fresh change of clothes at the top of your bag in the locker.

4. Shower.

5. HOT/COLD/HOT. I recommend: Medium Sauna (8-10 minutes) → Cold shower (30 seconds - 2 minutes) → Rest (2-3 minutes). Steam Room (8-10 minutes) → Cold plunge (30 seconds - 2 minutes) → Rest (1-2 minutes). Dry Sauna (8-12 minutes) → Cold plunge (30 seconds - 2 minutes) → Hot Tea (5 minutes)

I don’t want to get too into the weeds about what this reset is, but I do think it’s interesting to understand the science and the biochemical drug-like experience that can follow this process. The passive act of sitting in high heat mimics the cardiovascular exertion of exercise, the heat dilates your blood vessels, raises your heart rate, and flushes your lymph and circulatory systems. The cold water constricts your blood vessels and produces norepinephrine, a less famous hormone compared to serotonin and dopamine. When you get out of the pool, or remove your body from the cold, your nervous system shifts back into parasympathetic dominance (rest and digest), this toggle between stress and calm promotes a strong, smooth heart rate variability which is an important demonstration of healthy stress adaptation and resilience. It’s literally a physiological factory reset, which can leave you feeling calmer and more alert for hours afterwards, an after effect that people often describe as feeling REBOOTED. Renewed. ReBORN.

6. SCRUB TIME. Do a full body scrub (schedule one $,bringamitt or ask a friend $)

7. Hair mask, worked through and set while you steam (5-8 minutes)

8. Rinse thoroughly, cool shower.

9. EATING TIME. There seem to be two categories of sauna food: light and sweet (fruits, smoothies, ice cream) and hot and grounding (rice, spice, broth). I like the warmth and weight of rice and vegetables in bibimbap to anchor me mentally. I don’t want to become dizzy or dreamy.

10. Repeat the cycle, rising in heat again (Medium sauna → steam room → dry sauna, each followed by a cold plunge, rest and sips of tea)

11. Starfish and stretch on the heated floors

12. Library time. I like to gather 7-15 unthinkably weird sci-fi paperbacks from the incredible Wi Spa library, and let myself read and digest on a princess and the pea stack of mats. This is when you’ll be glad to have brought a hoodie.

13. Change into clean clothes and leave, pink and shiny.

Wi Spa is the most emblematic of all of the stops. In a way it contains a bit of every other ritual. It’s part laundry, it’s part car wash, it’s part ocean, bookstore, botanica; It’s collective and personal, ancient and contemporary, accessible and rarified. If you needed to pick only one act of rebirth from this guide, Wi Spa is the one I would recommend.

SUSHI DATE

Rokusho, 6630 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028

Take yourself out on a date. Dress up in something beautiful. Take care with each step — shoes that make you slow down, hair, a piece of jewelry. Rokusho is a perfect stop for this, set back from the iconic grit of Sunset Boulevard; it’s a temple of refinement and austerity, but its red neon signals a little sex and salt. Review the whole menu. Order exactly what you want. Pay attention to things around you. Notice the water as it passes through your throat. Listen to other conversations, to your server and bartender, to the well-chosen music, to the barely audible swish of wrists and knives.

There’s no avoiding the role of death here. There’s a miso and maitake hand roll and an avocado and truffle hand roll and a wonderful azuki matcha cake (a smear of cacao that tastes like cookies under the soft dirt of matcha) if you’d like to avoid animal products, but all endings are a death. Like paper, there is a finite resource here: your day, and it’s ending. Each meal is like this. Each bite is like this. Each hour of each day is like this. It’s the one you have, right now, and each next one is different and destined to be the only one of its kind.

This was one day, one way through. I’ve been mapping other days — different cities, different themes. If this guide worked for you, please follow along. There will be more.