last thoughts on los angeles, pt. 2 March 17, 2008

i once pitied the youth of l.a.

from the caravans of toddlers being rushed across deadly westside intersections in their nanny drawn strollers, to the wide-eyed teenagers, busing into hollywood from the valley on a school day, geeked out on ritalin and their mother’s cheap gin, to the young adults who wake up one day in echo park, by the most irrelevant circumstance, and are forced to seek out the desires and temptations of a city that never wanted them in the first place.

how could anyone possibly grow up here? to endure these unjustifiable lessons, the burdens of a trans-generational epidemic of false hope and relentless consumption. not i, of course. i came to this city a wise old chap. grounded by the lectures of all those northern californian river trails, set free upon the wilderness of new york city. i came to los angeles to exist as i am, a blind entity, a lone musketeer, a day tripper. i once imagined it didn’t exist…

2006?

after nearly a week of aimlessly wandering about the mural ridden alley passages of downtown, the heated strolls down hollywood blvd, even a sun/guiness drenched lunch at the english pub where i observed morrissey brooding in the corner so many times before, i made my way up to top of barnsdall park. a simple hike that nearly defeated me on all those overcast mornings in my deathlike state. those freakishly vibrant sunsets that set my heart at ease. i returned to gather these scattered remnants i so foolishly left behind. but only found a ‘no smoking’ sign obstructing my view of all the bourgeois rape fortresses nestled in the hills. i was suddenly impaled with the most overwhelming sense of nothing. and it was beautiful. and it was everything.

i was the youth of l.a.

this city was my playground. my university. my sunday school. and though whatever it was i absorbed may or may not have been unique, or incomprehensible to a tribe so viciously consumed by their twisted morals and traditions, it was so very real. perhaps more real than i may ever know again. and that’s what i found there. and thats what i left there. and i really needed a cigarette at that point, and i felt lonely and weird being there without my dog.