There's not a lot I could write that I haven't already said. This day, this anniversary is one I could not forget. The city itself tells me through the Jacarandas and grey skies. It's my return to Los Angeles.
Will I write of your vanilla sky? Your hot santa anas? The purple jacarandas? The black pavement of my favorite streets: Fountain, Highland, Olympic, La Brea, Sunset. The highway interchanges, the 405 to the 10 late at night? Or to zoom from the 110 to the 5 almost able to run my fingers along Riverside Drive? Will I write of the dreams made and destroyed? Of my pain and excitement? Of friendship and fights - smashed glasses or caresses? Will I write of the smell of adventures at LAX? The hills of blooming wildflowers at the Gorman folds? The windmills slicing the sky out by Palm Springs? Will I write of the Angeles forest? Hills of burnt trees, rocks and the pines. Mt Wilson's face turned to the sky? Or the skee ball and pinball machines on the Santa Monica pier? The characters in Venice beach - snake man, roller skating guitar man, and who knows what kind of new characters have found their places out there?
From where does my deep devotion come? The heart can not be understood, so I do not bother with the questions. I love you in ways a human can love a city. By existing. Driving your city streets, fast, dancing up and down the gears, defragging. I love you through my words, written, spoken. Here on this blog, and beyond. I love you in the ordinary way in which you live. Every day is magical, and every day is ordinary. Breathing, exhaling. In the end, I love you because it is here, within your arms, that I became that which I dreamed to become. Puissant potential collapsed into the reality of flesh. My flesh.
You are the city of dreams. Here, anything can, will, and does happen. Puissant with possibilities. That collapse into dreams and nightmares. Every instant. All around you. Inside you. Beyond you. Us.
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