Off the 101, past the dense barricade of hollywood, through the threshold of the fluorescent tunnel, you'll see an LED CRUCIFIX towering over the hollywood dell. If you follow its glare across the winding side streets, you can find willetta. It means “Protected One” in German. Steps with mosaics of mary of guadalupe and candy colored gems point towards a jade side gate, leading to a garden path. Through it's gates,  is an impossible garden, with lush leaves that fan out like elephant ears, bamboo trees, birds of paradise and majestic palms. This garden extends back further than the eye can see, down a narrow path dotted with purple trumpet flowers and canary flowers, seeming to belong to the tropics of South America. The wilting fingers of leaves point to a koi pond, guarded by a statue of a Goddess. There are stone lions and wooden shrines. Cheeky ceramic gnomes and tall grass. A turquoise villa stands watching this garden, alone. 

Vines swim across it's roof and weave through it's wooden beams. 

The upstairs inhabitant is an elderly woman, with pink hair like finely spun cotton candy and a dark gruff voice. She speaks in soliloquies and smokes on the patio. She tends to the garden, sometimes planting four feet tall opium, which she smokes, on a tibetan daybed. She collects religious paintings of golden haired saints, fabric from India and Thailand,  and makes jewelry. She lives with a copper colored sausage dog and a six foot burly black man, almost 30 years her junior. Sometimes they fuck or argue at 4am, much to the irritation of the lower tenant.

Below them, a red wooden dragon hangs from an entryway, protecting the lower tenant from the city smog. Inside, the walls were lined with wooden unicorns and sacred hearts, ceramic horses and pink neon lights. The air is thick and fragrant, from the pungent repetitive burning of frankincense and posh candles. There are celtic knot coasters and colorful champagne flutes, vases painted with dancing cupids containing bright roses.The tv is concealed behind a handwoven mexican tapestry of mythological animals, and cowskin rugs cover the wooden floor. From the walls, gold framed hunting prints peer at portraits of bombshells, hung beside drawings of sphinxs and leonie woman convening with deer. It is cluttered with notes from friends on hotel stationary and polaroids. There are piles of books on heaven and sex and lost mysteries. Emerald shells, russian dolls, wicker purses, prayer boxes and egyptian artifacts. Mirrored trays holding rhubarb perfume from france and opals, citrine and amethyst. 

A bedroom is concealed behind curtains with dancing pink jaguars, where golden cherubs hang above a gothic bed, fit for a church. It is plump with egyptian cotton clouds.  Closets burst with fur and lace and linen, feathered boas, tutus, cowboy boots and brightly colored lingerie. The lower tenant stays up late and wakes up early, because she is afraid of betraying the Sun. She needs to feel the groves of the canyons in her heels every day, and tries to send messages to hawks and raven and deer and trees. She has no lover, as she bores of them quite quickly, and much prefers holding her breath for a mythological man who lives in her head.