When It Comes Down To It
I'm just an LA girl
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I’m here in LA. Sitting on my couch with my computer in my lap. There are no words to communicate the gratitude I feel being able to write that sentence. Nor are there enough words to illustrate the heaviness in my heart, knowing so many in my immediate vicinity have just had their homes ripped away.
We rent a little house in Atwater, we’ve been here for two years. Right now there are fires burning to the west, east and north of us. Our area is currently safe. For the past few days I’ve watched the winds and packed bags and talked to neighbors who’ve lived on this block for years and years. Together, we have looked at the nearby mountains. With one hand shielding the orange sun, they say they’re not leaving, not yet. And I too, have chosen to stay. My parents are in Santa Monica, they live in a tiny one bedroom that somehow ended up in an evacuation warning zone. My parents are both physically compromised, they didn’t want to leave unless they really had to. I drove across town and picked up our single remaining box of family photographs—see my old post Soft Loss—and two of my dad’s guitars. When I asked him why these guitars, his response had nothing to do with monetary value. He said because they serve entirely different musical purposes. That hit hard, as everyone that I know in LA is currently grappling with their sense of purpose.
Before the dust can even settle, we are all trying to determine how best to serve—right here, right now. Boyfriend and I have showed up at different small collection hubs, to help sort donations and carry boxes and bags to big donation centers. One day we loaded up our car with items gathered at Zebulon and headed to a giant facility. We waited in a line of cars an hour long. I said to Boyfriend, oh I wonder if this is a bunch of people donating. But when we got to the entrance, most of those cars split off into the receiving side. So so so many people were showing up in need. The next day we took a car filled with socks, mens clothes and dog food to an unmarked address on Beverly Blvd. As we pulled into the driveway, I thought we were in the wrong place. Then we saw stands of produce and a man handing a woman bundles of fresh green beans. He shook our hands and said dog food was the most requested thing. That’s LA, the big and the small. The hip music venues turned donation center. The commercial producers utilizing their organizing brains to distribute all around the city. The costumer’s union sorting and hanging clothing into a free store. The crew members donating their generators. The screenwriters for our favorite T.V. shows still having to work, but sending their money to individuals who lost everything. Over the past few days, I’ve talked to so many people in so many niches. Everyone is exhausted, still we’re all trying in our own way.
LA is the only home I’ve ever known. I was born in Tennessee, but my parents decided they had to raise me here. In the city where my mother grew up, where my parents met and fell in love. We drove west across the country when I was two—I’ve never been back to my birthplace. LA has given me everything. Literally everything has come from the people I met in this town. The chances to expand, to create. To fail and to try again. And the ocean. The mountains. The airbrushed blue sky.
Still, some days I get fed up with LA. I want to leave her and move to a tiny town where no one will think to find me—preferably in Europe. But LA isn’t sensitive. She knows she’s the butt of so many jokes. She's always there for me, always ready to let me back into her embrace. I grew up in apartments on the westside. My dad worked in a restaurant, making hardly enough to cover the co-pay on my mother’s prescriptions. We never travelled, but when my dad and I ran errands on weekends, he’d drive on streets where I could see the silver ocean horizon. I always felt I was in the best city in the world.
As I grew up, I moved slowly east across LA. With every move I’ve learned to love another part of this city. Each pocket holds part of my soul. Especially PCH. Pacific Coast Highway. The stretch of asphalt right next to the ocean. I can only sort of explain why. People come from all over to drive that stretch. I’ve talked to guys in different countries who know PCH. They rent nice cars when they land at LAX and drive up Lincoln Blvd, straight to PCH. There’s something magical, magnetic. You can pull over and find the sand, the ocean, the edge of the continent.
Instead of talking about the destruction that now lines that highway, I want take a moment to remember PCH. The PCH that will hopefully live forever in my heart. This is a small segment from the book I just finished writing. It’s still in its first draft, but I wanted to share this little piece. I love u LA, thank you for everything.
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13. PCH
When you close your eyes and listen to the ocean, time ceases to exist. You can hear the growing swell, unseen energy folding upon itself, stretching the space of water. Instead of fighting expansion, the ocean obliges into a wave. Tumbling into a curl, one of nature’s quickest spirals, a splash of water against water against sand and rock. Water meets air, turns foam crawling onto shore.
Cold and salty, the ocean nips at my ankles. Mama and I have our feet in the wet sand, side by side, squatting just above the waterline. The waves are so big from down here, bubbling creatures tumbling towards us. I want to run but mama tells me to wait. She’s laughing, smiling her big smile and I can’t help but giggle. Mama knows everything, she wouldn’t let this ocean creature take me away. Another wave crashes before us, releasing its scary shape, making an incredible thunder sound. Water comes rushing again, this time it gets my diaper wet, but that’s okay, mama says.
Today mama is giving me the ocean. To get here, we packed up our car with shovels and peanut butter sandwiches and unsliced apples. My dad drove us down a giant slope, mama said, get ready for the incline! And there was it was, endless glimmering sprinkles on a calm blue, blue so big like the sky but mama said it is the ocean. That’s where we’re going, bear! Can you see the sand?
Then the blue slipped out of sight and we’re driving on. Next to us is a giant mountain, covered in pink flowers and plump green blades that mama calls ice plants. Mama says the mountain is really a cliff, that’s why we can see little rocks and slanted colors in the stone. This is Pacific Coast Highway, this is how I got to school everyday!
We keep going on this long cliff road, mama playing songs. I love the echoing wood and dancing wires. A man’s voice, I do not know him but we hear him sing all the time.
Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world
It’s hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world
I’ll always remember you like a child, girl
The car sways with the curves, I let my body go with the inertia. Our dog runs back and forth across the grey leather seats, sticking her head out the window, taking salt air from both sides. It’s a long drive, but mama says it will be worth it. There’s nowhere else for me to be, I’m barely three.
Here Jim, a spot.
My dad guides our car into place on the side of the road and mama gathers me into her arms. Cars are going so fast, faster than I’ve ever seen. Mama scoops me in her arms and we make our way across the lanes. My dad balances the bags and beach chairs, the dog following close at his side.
It’s a little beach, but I don’t know that. The sand is like a playground, but so much better. It’s cold and full of sticks and stones. Mama collects a fistful of rocks and shows them to me.
Look, you can see quartz bands in this one. And this one, it’s so flat like a pancake! And here’s my favorite, a heart rock, just for you.
How did she find these treasures? She places them in my palm, one at a time. They’re wet, smooth but not like a plastic toy.
Do you want to visit the ocean? I’ll go with you.
Mama holds my hand, taking me to the water. The ocean, she says, is very powerful. But if you know its ways, you can spend hours playing in the waves.
We’re here, waiting for the next wave, laughing just because. I need nothing more than this, watching the foam fizzle on the sand, letting the cold water embrace my ankles. And look! Our feet are buried by sand. We didn’t even move. The water is at work. It is a mystery, it is a god, it is strong and forever. I close my eyes, just for a moment. Mama is there to watch out. A sound all embracing. Mist on my cheeks, sand in my hair, so much sand. That day mama gave me the ocean, in all its endless shades of blue. Strong and forever. At the edge of the Pacific, she is there, I am there, we’re together.