The City of Angeles

There was a mishap with my debit card which has necessitated a change in plans. So while I should be in Costa Rica already, I am instead still in Los Angeles and am flying out tomorrow. I won't begin to go into the stress and misery that accompanied the destruction of my card and the canceling of the original flight, but now I think it was actually a good thing. I had only given myself two days after returning from DC to get all my affairs in order and go. It felt like a panicked flight away from everything and towards much that was unknown. But I have now had a week in LA to leisurely prepare and I feel much more calm now.

I have discovered that there are many things about Los Angeles that I really enjoy. It is well into spring here, and record rainfall this winter has made the Hollywood hills look green and wild. I spent today walking around, doing errands in shorts and a tank top. There are butterflies in people's gardens and flowers growing out of the sidewalk cracks. It is so bright here and I have to put on sunglasses every time I go outside- a shock to my Oregon acclimatized eyes. I could hear the flocks of feral parrots screeching in the palm trees just off of Wilshire Blvd.

I went biking around Hollywood the other day, and I enjoyed the architecture of the neighborhoods: the more modest houses look bright and cheery with their red-tiled roofs and bougainvillea growing up their sides (just ignore the bars on the windows). The big old LA style manses look stately and dignified. I had lunch at a taco stand on Santa Monica and Vine and found a dive bar just off of Hollywood Blvd with dollar PBRs. I spent a few hours hanging out and talking with the regulars; geeks and tattoo artists.

Later that night some kids from the hostel and I went clubbing. We made a very international group: a girl from Japan, one from Philly, the French girl, the guy from Tunisia who speaks five languages and works as a dancer when he's not working at the hostel, an Italian guy, etc, etc.  We tried to get into Bruce Willis' birthday party at Las Palmas, but were unsuccessful, even though I put on my big dark sunglasses and tried to convince the door guy in my best "Do you know who I am??" tone of voice that we were on the list. We ended up in a huge crowded rooftop nightclub, overlooking the strip and with a view of all the LA lights across the city. On our way back, even though my grandmother lived a few blocks away before she died, and this part of the city is as old and familiar to me as my childhood, I found myself pointing things out along with everyone else. "Oh, look at whose star!" we said to each other, and "Look, it's Jack Nicholson's hand prints!".

The hostel itself is on Crenshaw (the nicer, northern part) on the edge of Korea town. There are few signs in English, but many restaurants. Many kids live here for months at a time and so people get to know each other well.

It might not be much, but it feels quite homey to me right now, and I think I really needed this time here.

Also: I found this poem the other day and liked it very very much.

"One Art"
By Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.