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.

SEATTLE

Scouting for a new place for my very restless transient soul, I went to Seattle to:

feel winter, frost, rain and cold, in a great way.

Space needle

Meet a new and gorgeous budding human in my life while rekindling a once again very tender friendship.

Eero (aka coconut monkey) y la Natalie

Eating ramen, like ramen that takes 4 days to make kind of ramen experience. Just crazy amazing.

Tsukushinbo in Downtown Seattle. They only make 35 bowls a day. The broth takes 4 days to make.

Finding the best specialty, quirky spots like:

Pates, beautiful cuts of meat, sausage, even pork skins for your pups. Gorgeously designed in every way.

Leaving a little calmer, a bit more focused, yet still, carrying the heavy sense of perpetual transience.
Seattle was wonderful regardless.

Back to LA.