After months of restless nomadic wanderings, I find myself returned to the metropolitan spread that is Los Angeles. It is an illustrious relationship, the one I share with this vast land that at times seems to embody all that is wrong with America.
But Los Angeles is a land of contrasts, primarily those that will not willingly reveal themselves to the passive onlooker, the weekend visitor hoping to get an imprint of city's spirit and essence by placing their hand in Clark Gable's imprinted palm on Hollywood Blvd, only to be disturbed by an overly-aggressive "performance artist" with a criminal record dressed as Spiderman that demands you offer him tips for accosting you. Or the labryinthian freeway system designed merely to test the limits of man's anxiety before he either a) becomes violent or b) inevitably bursts into flames and evaporates.
We urban dwellers are at odds with the world, not just because of the break neck pace of city life, but because the more cement blocks that we place in the soil, the more estranged we become from the Earth and the serenity the natural environment provides. I have countless friends that speak of a pervasive loneliness they simply cannot combat, despite being surrounded by several million individuals. And so the challenge in Los Angeles is to find the hidden joys, the small pleasures, and the every day surprises that help offset the imbalances of the daily metro grind.
My neighborhood alone is teeming with characters ripe for a future memoir, from senile used bookstore owners who only put books on sadomasochism as their "Weekly Feature!" on counter top display, to vintage clothing store employees who openly discuss their plans to visit AA meetings to pick up "hot and vulnerable men".
"I think you should consider N.A.", a male co-worker responds, tossing his angular bangs aside apathetically.
"Good idea," she chimes in without hesitation.
Just a block away from my home I came upon a group of Mexican labor men, artists and photographers who play flamenco together every Saturday. Entranced by their music, they beckoned me into their gated complex, handed me a Bud, and proceeded to discuss the struggles of the Latino population transitioning to life in California and Los Angeles. They sang with whiskey soaked and accented rasps, plucking at rusted strings with fingers callused and marred from meticulous day labor. And as the sun set across the hills, the fluorescent orange and purple rays of the smog-filtered sun washed across their leathered faces, and I was, almost secretly, in awe of my surroundings.
It is rather trying to "settle" at this age, when the restlessness of one's feet seems to occupy all other thoughts. When the yearning for foreign lands and new cultures is the topic of nightly dream scapes and daily ponderings, but even in stillness I find one can be awed by the world directly in front of them. Perhaps, as I am seeing, the only way to persevere in the urban experience is to seek the unknown, to make oneself a vessel for spontaneity and continue to rewrite the paradigm of your surroundings until it has no definition. Then, and only then, it will become an ever unfolding experience of newness.
