What It Is

    Los Angeles is a city of lights, endless firefly lights moving like a river through the countless freeways that link the city with its many hearts, like so many luminous blood-veins. I am a stranger here, and like so many other strangers, I am, slowly and uncertainly, discovering this city, with its good and its bad and its beautiful and sometimes, its ugly. This blog will chronicle, in no particular spatial or temporal order, some of my experiences here, innocent observations, drunken serendipities, other moments, little sparks of perspective that disappear with the alcohol buzz, those certain moments that seem like an eternity, only to slip away before you can grab a strong enough hold on them to mold them into a tangible thought. LA hardly even fits the definition of a city, really, as so many people will tell you. And to some extent I have found this to be a truism. The 'city's' various parts all seem to have their own character, their own spirit, if you will. This is an effort, on my part, to try and gather together the disenchanted shards of pretty twinkling glass that make Los Angeles, eventually, into a window, or perhaps even a mirror.

  I should have started writing this earlier, but perhaps I was just waiting for the dust to settle. Some of the images used here may not be in the public domain and I would be happy to take them down if someone asked me to. And of course, this is entirely subjective. My perceptions, my opinions, my rants, my reasonings. The other people won't be mentioned by their actual names, and they may even be fictionalized. I don't mind if it's largely fiction, really, as long as it captures the essence of the actual experience. So take all of this with handfuls of salt, and no references to eternity please. This is the here, and this is the now, and also maybe the recently passed then. If I stumble across some eternal truths it shall be a happy coincidence, but I doubt it. Consider this an exercise in association, a series of letters, love and otherwise to the city that I call home right now, and will, in all probability, call home for some time to come. An epistolary exposition of a relationship, between a city and me, and perhaps, happily, between the city and some more of its present inhabitants. Or even those who don't live here. I have lived in so many cities vicariously, through jump-cuts, translated poetry, passages of imagined smoke curling gently up like evening melodies. At this point though, it's just for myself.

So, in short, this is a ramble. A set of rambles. About moments. About that girl in the black jeans and shirt, looking incredibly, heartbreakingly beautiful, in that moment before she slips out of the bar, and all I can do is sigh at the door where her silhouette used to be. These are writings about inconsequential events. These are writings about friends. These are writings about mountains looming blue and distant by day. These are writings mostly about the sensations of night, but passing afternoons and slanting sunbeams will creep in, sometimes, like memories of withered relationships. These are writings, by extension, about America. These are writings which don't have to mean a thing. But they could. Who can tell? I'll figure it out as I go along. Or perhaps I won't.

That is all.