Living in LA

It's never dark in LA. It reminds me of a conversation I had with my physics friend Matt. He talked about light pollution one night when we were driving around town and it was very humid and almost-fogging. The flood lights from a nearby park extended for miles--we could not place where this light was coming from, after all, it was never that bright. But the air was moist and the fog was beginning, and the light traveled.

The skyline towers within view most places I go. Their heights stretch upward, taking over the horizon. The light from these buildings stretch outward, flooding the night sky with their neon luminescence. The night is full of condensation from the warm afternoons. It doesn't rain here often but the difference in temperature brings with it foggy air. I'm sure the smog spreads the light as well. Last Friday as I drove in the humid air, because it actually rained for once, I drove down this street that has a clear view of the city skyline. There were spotlights dancing in the air and it looked like the sky was on fire. Clouds? Moisture? Fog? Smog? Maybe a mix of it all.

The smog. You need a car in LA to get around. Public transportation is unreliable, slow, and inconvenient. How can a city full of so many drivers be full of so many people who cannot drive?

Living in LA is bizarre. How can a city with the most millionaires also be the place of the most people who are homeless in this country? Contradictions. LA is contradictions. I drive down South Central Ave in Watts to get to work and drive past homelessness, intense poverty. Walking down Hollywood Boulevard, where the names of the famous and wealthy are at your feet, you are surrounded by people without a place to go home to.  Life here makes little sense. And on many occasions I find myself wondering if this is really my life right now, how I got here, and what this experience will teach me, what I will walk away from remembering. I don't think it will be seeing the Hollywood sign for the first time, or the time that I drove past Burbank. It will be the mornings I drive past the man off of the 105, asking for recyclables. The man in the wheelchair across the street panhandling. It will be the boys--the boy who told me that he was going to write about the period that he was homeless for his personal statement, the boy who bought a man outside the Chinese Food place dinner, the boy who never thought homelessness was anything but lack of motivation who chose to sleep outside in solidarity with them in order to learn more about the world. I'll remember the first time I saw Skid Row.

I'm sure the Los Angeles people will ask me about when I go home for Christmas is not the Los Angeles I have lived in. And I do not regret this fact. I would rather see this LA--the real LA before I put on my blinders and admire the famous handprints, the insanity of Venice Beach. This is the LA I was brought here to see, and to share with others.