los angeles

got into los angeles 2 nights ago at 2:30 in the morning… after 3 days of hotsprings and a 10 hour bus ride. my friends here live in west hollywood, in a non-gentrified corner of a city so massive i can’t quite get a handle on where everything is.

there is a certain passing point reached once i’ve been in the united states for more than a few days – a line that demarcates patience from revulsion – where i am reminded over and over of the mean-ness and shabbiness characterizing so much of the small-towns, or the craziness lying just under the skin’s surface in the large cities. this is the border within myself, crossed on pretty much every trip south longer than 5 days – the farther south i go the more foreign i feel.

this country simultaneously produces in me a deep desire for radical action, and at the same time the nagging doubts of the futility of fighting a beast so large and self-involved. no doubt i find my hope (and my privilege) in a half acre and a rented house nestled within the cedars and firs of the northwest in a place no one down here has ever heard of. it is so far away, so safe, so not-america.

but still, i am glad to be here among friends, spending time with aaron who i have not seen for over a year – and plotting our escape to the desert tomorrow to see the rare desert-bloom (apparently the best in 10 years owing to all the rain they have had down here in the past 2 months). this camping trip will be a first for me, as canada provides only a single opportunity to experience true desert and it’s not the same in any case. i am hoping to get some good photographs and possibly some colour in my skin which is ghost-pale in this land of 365-day sun.

we have errands to run, and i have to transfer my clothes from washer to dryer – so this i where i will sign off for the time being…..