Sunday, July 14, 2013

Dear Los Angeles,

Your helicopter night birds
Blocks on lock down
Tamaleras chismiando under a mobile rainbow umbrella outside my window
Scoops non dairy maple oreo
Guisado's Cochinito pibil
Your thick layer
"I'm an actress"
"When my script gets picked up"
"When ...."
"When..."
"When..."
Hot summer nights reading outside
Hot summer nights in grit
Tape paintings on east side window fronts
Avenue wars
Fantastic sunsets to compensate almost just enough


Its been about 3 months since I decided to leave Los Angeles and return to the Bay Area. I left before I resented that city. I left before I got sucked in and forgot how to leave. Somehow this dense yet expansive place felt lonely unlike anywhere I've been. Unbearably so.  Leaving is something I know how to do well.
Questions of place and location fascinate me. How does someone know when to call a place home? And when to give up and leave it and thrust themselves to start over elsewhere. I can't help but constantly ask myself this question partly because I've done it so many times and wonder if I'll ever stop but also because I grew up in an environment plagued with nostalgia for a place that although not geographically far away, seems to only exist in the past. Unreachable. Unattainable.

Anyway. Los Angeles was what I needed then. And like all places I set foot on, nostlagia will inevitably surface.