Why I ran away I'll never know

While I grow weary of having to defend LA from dismissive outsiders/jaded residents, there are moments in this city where I wonder how anyone looking hard enough couldn't find some measure of happiness here.

One of the things that's great about this city is that, whether it's the mountains or the beach, pretty much anything you want can be found just an hour away. And now, some memories from this last month back in the city whose shadow I grew up in:

We found snow on Mount Baldy. And then we were paid to have adventures here. There was a hill. It was climbed. Much was recorded for posterity. All was well.

We spent a day in the ocean. Or two. She bade us farewell with colors.

Dive certified? Yessir. I wish I had more photos from inside the city proper, but the bulk of this trip was spent behind Possible's doors, cooking up our particular brand of magic. There are exciting things on the horizon, to be sure.

Tomorrow, I get on a plane to take me back to the East Coast, and the life I left there. The amount I ache to return to my adoptive city surprises even me. It was good to be back in the home that was made for me, but I can't wait to be back in the home I have made for myself.

Still, LA's place in my heart remains unmoved. This is me, right here.

Better things are coming (I swear there's truth in that)

A new year, an open road.

I was sure you'd give me more.

Not even a cat was out. The rain surged down with a steady drone. It meant to harm New York and everyone there. The gutters could not contain it. Long ago they had despaired of the job and surrendered. But the rain paid no attention to them…New York people never lived in houses or even in burrows. They inhabited cells in stone cliffs. They timed the cooking of their eggs by the nearest traffic light. If the light went wrong, so did the eggs…

“I don’t like civilization,” she said, to the rain.

-- from Barbara Newhall Follett's Lost Island, published in 1934 when she was 19 years old, 7 years after her first novel The House Without Windows arrived to stunning acclaim and 5 years before she disappeared forever.

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/vanishing-act.php?page=all

remember me as a time of day