I have lived the better part of the last decade in Southern California, most of which was in the city of Los Angeles. Some of the best years of my life have happened here and I have been in LA long enough to not only call myself a Californian but also long enough to feel like a Californian. The part of me that had thought about LA as a stinking cesspool where egos and wannabes are always ready to backstab and lie and fuck their way to the top has faded into the background. Replaced over time by the nuanced understanding that comes from living in any city for so long. After 10 years it becomes clear that as in any place the bad lives alongside the good. Los Angeles will defy expectations at every turn and under the layer of grime and graffiti is something so uniquely special that to understand this city is only to love it.
I have fallen completely under it’s spell, unintentionally joining the hordes of beach going health conscious burger loving narcissists. Our beers are brewed locally and organically and our meat and vegetables are as hormone free as possible. We love chasing our favorite trucks from neighborhood to neighborhood because the tofu burrito from Kogi is just that good. And rather than scoff at a the idea that one of the best meals I have ever eaten came from the back of an old delivery truck, I advocate for more meals to be made in the backs of old delivery trucks. I am now an Angeleno, and not in the stereotypical sense that I refuse to buy anything but organic dairy products, or that I will always prefer to drink fair trade locally roasted coffee (though both of those things are true). I don't speak with overly accentuated vowels or know how to surf, but I am home in LA because after all this time, the yellow warmth of the perpetual summer sun has soaked through me. Deep down past my skin and bones and expectations to become integral to who I am. It's a part of me. The charm of a city being cradled by so vast an ocean, hugging a border where north becomes south and east meets west is boundless. In it’s miles and miles of roads there are run down strip malls where a dentist's office might share a store front with a Vietnamese restaurant that sells the best Pho you have ever eaten on this continent. There are movie studios and dive bars and taqueria's and just down the street from a Lamborghini dealership.
The beach runs alongside the madness of traffic backed up along PCH from Venice to Malibu while the 10 ending in Santa Monica pours tourists and locals from within the city to the shore. I have spent countless hours lazily walking up and down a beach following the line where dry sand is kissed by the tide, letting the gentle waves wash over my feet to the ankles while children play and birds dip in and out of the water blah blah blah. The sun setting on an unusually warm January afternoon is something that cannot be denied as perfectly magical. It is impossible to resist the occasional urge to swim out past the break and bob up and down in the surf, turning from the horizon to the shore as the lights in the homes and hotels illuminate and begin to give shape to the dusky shadows that line the Santa Monica bluffs. I have in those moments laid back to float listlessly staring at the changing colors of the sky, as the moon tugged at the waters around me. The swim back to shore, away from the darkening oblivion of the Pacific Ocean will always make me feel minuscule. Each time reflecting that I am only a tiny part of an immense and beautiful world.
I have thrown down blankets on the lawn of a cemetery filled with the ghosts of Old Hollywood and watched classic films projected on a pristinely white mausoleum wall. I have sat under the stars, sipping beers, the faint odor of weed whispering gently past me and my friend when the breeze was sufficient to carry it our way. I have held the hands of dear friends while they stuggled through the trials that tend to define and shape who someone will become, and sharing their broken hearts sat silent in sadness. I have accomplished life goals here and I have made mistakes here and I have become the man I am today because of my time here. Sharing these times with close friends has further nourished the roots I have planted and cultivated here and as deep as they may run into the desert beneath me, I have come to realize that this wonderful place is merely a stop on my journey, not my destination. I am leaving LA within the next year. The plans surrounding my escape are beginning to take shape. As a result I am becoming increasingly aware of the depth to which these roots have reached, and the effort that will be required when the time comes take them up. It is no easy thing to say such goodbyes so completely. When I consider the gifts I have received over the last 10 years, gifts of friendship and experience, I realize the incredible difficulty that I wiI face as I loosen my grip and eventually let go of this place and its people.
The beginning of something new and exciting will always mean the end of something else. And however right the new beginning might be, the ending that comes with it can be unbearable. This ending is yet a long ways off, but it is large and over this next year it will loom. Casting it’s long shadow over the usually sunny West Hollywood neighborhood I call home. But within that shadow I will swim at the beach much as I need to, and laugh, and share beers, and hug, and cry as much as I need to. The words “parting is such sweet sorrow” have never rung more true for me than they currently do. But the goodbye to come some day will not interfere with my today, and though the process of letting go has begun, there are yet things that will not need to be let go of. Things hidden away, that I have put in my heart and they will go with me onward. To wherever that may be.