I feel an “irrational exuberance” whenever I visit Los Angeles (which is something I only get the opportunity to do something like once every three or four years). Really, this happens whenever I visit California — but more strongly in LA than elsewhere. Maybe it’s the air, the palm trees, the sun. Or maybe it’s the traffic — I love it when somebody gives me a ride down the boulevards, past the strip malls and the mansions, through the neighborhoods (both residential ones unknown to me, and ones like Westwood, or Venice, or Hollywood, or wherever there is –atypically — lots of foot traffic, people shopping. Perhaps it’s something they put in the air, in the water? A friend who lives here told me that the happiness of southern California was simply this: people being fattened up, to be choice dishes at some sort of alien banquet (orchestrated, no doubt, by Governor Arnold). Today nobody gave me a ride; but, tired of all the bank skyscrapers downtown, I walked a few blocks east and enjoyed the funky vitality of Broadway. Maybe part of it was the nervous, slightly paranoid buzz I was feeling (I forgot to eat lunch, and instead drank way too much coffee — something that would never happen to me anyplace else).
When I’m here, I imagine an alternative life path for myself: if I knew how to drive; if I had gotten a job here. It would be like gliding, an endless exultant horizontal displacement, the sensuous enjoyment of surfaces (when in actuality I am not at all a sensuous person). California, the optical illusion at the end of the rainbow. Of course this alternate life path never happened, and never will (not even in all the plurality of worlds of quantum mechanics, or of David Lewis’ logic). And it’s no use mourning for the self you are not (not that this place puts me in the frame of mind in which I could mourn). But still…
I feel an “irrational exuberance” whenever I visit Los Angeles (which is something I only get the opportunity to do something like once every three or four years). Really, this happens whenever I visit California — but more strongly in LA than elsewhere. Maybe it’s the air, the palm trees, the sun. Or maybe it’s the traffic — I love it when somebody gives me a ride down the boulevards, past the strip malls and the mansions, through the neighborhoods (both residential ones unknown to me, and ones like Westwood, or Venice, or Hollywood, or wherever there is –atypically — lots of foot traffic, people shopping. Perhaps it’s something they put in the air, in the water? A friend who lives here told me that the happiness of southern California was simply this: people being fattened up, to be choice dishes at some sort of alien banquet (orchestrated, no doubt, by Governor Arnold). Today nobody gave me a ride; but, tired of all the bank skyscrapers downtown, I walked a few blocks east and enjoyed the funky vitality of Broadway. Maybe part of it was the nervous, slightly paranoid buzz I was feeling (I forgot to eat lunch, and instead drank way too much coffee — something that would never happen to me anyplace else).
When I’m here, I imagine an alternative life path for myself: if I knew how to drive; if I had gotten a job here. It would be like gliding, an endless exultant horizontal displacement, the sensuous enjoyment of surfaces (when in actuality I am not at all a sensuous person). California, the optical illusion at the end of the rainbow. Of course this alternate life path never happened, and never will (not even in all the plurality of worlds of quantum mechanics, or of David Lewis’ logic). And it’s no use mourning for the self you are not (not that this place puts me in the frame of mind in which I could mourn). But still…