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are you afraid to fail?
are you afraid to start?
what are you afraid of?
what are you not?Sunday, March 26, 2023
Fred Segal & Rainy L.A.
I had the pleasure of spending two weeks in Los angeles, and they were two good weeks. it wasn't a vacation per se; i was still working, my friends were still working, and honestly in some ways it was more stressful than just a normal week that i would live back in s.f., but they were two really good weeks. i realize now looking back and reflecting on this time, I'm so happy it _wasn't_ a vacation: sometimes, this time included, a vacation would really (have) be(en) harmful. it's good to work and be extra busy and stimulated too. both that and vacations break the dull monotony of getting older, and i think you need both.
Pleasure really is the right word to describe this trip, even though it was (oddly) raining in L.A. almost the entire time i was there. i remember only a handful of the days that were clear, and probably fewer where the whole day was clear. pretty much everyone was at least a little bummed out due to the rain: my friends, my friends' families, cashiers at cafes, everyone. really everyone. it felt to me like so much more of a _real_ time than any other time that i had visited los angeles. i mean this in the least dramatic way possible: seeing people deal with some uncontrollable factor impacting their life in realtime was maybe sort of interesting. the rain was something _real_, unpredicted, uncalled for. it was so spontaneous and not-in-the-script. a twist of what i would expect. I like when things are new and interesting, and having experiences that i have not before, and I guess i'd never spent 2 weeks in L.A. in the rain before. it felt nice to wake up some mornings to morning doves and even a bicycle ringing if i was really lucky, and some mornings or even middles-of-nights to the steady pitter-patter of rain and the cool night air sweeping in from the window.i really had not experienced that in so long, because in s.f. when it rains it's always far too cold for me to ever even dream of keeping the window open and even if i did, i would end up having to close it to shut out the sounds of people and cars and sirens and all the other loud noises that drowned out even the rain.
I had a few places this time that i had resolved i HAD to check out, and I kept myself to those promises. One day I drove from the east side where I was staying all the way out to hollywood hills and drove up and down the canyons, past Mulholland Drive, past so many mansions and houses on stilts and Rolls-Royces and all the things you'd expect. But really it was so different in person; i had forgotten that since last time I was enamored by the wealth of L.A. two springs ago in Beverly Hills, a bit overwhelmed and offput by just the sheer opulence of what i had seen walking around Rodeo Drive that day. I drove down back in to Beverly Hills again and went to some shops, buying nothing, but more numb this time to the bad feeling being there gave me (though it still was there, unquestionably). the better part was driving through the neighborhoods and getting to see the lawns, lush and bright green from the rains, the hedge fences, the ferraris, and so on. but then i had enough of it and drove on down sunset and up to fred segal, which honestly kinda just sucked (i was expecting the epitome of "old school LA Cool" but it ended up just being an eerily empty store (apart from one 40 something guy looking at the womens clothes).
I begrudgingly paid the parking machine as i left fred segal and drove down sunset and back up into the canyons and then decided, as the rain started falling harder, to turn left onto mulholland, and drove for a while there, stopping off occasionally to look out into the view below, shivering in the cold rain, thinking about the david lynch movie that i still haven't seen.
and then i drove home, back on the highway till i reached pasadena and got a smoothie and thought about a couple of days prior when it was bright and sunny and i realized how beautiful L.A. can be once again. i drove home and wasted time until i finally fell asleep, pretty late into the night.
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