roots in city of angels

Blue skies in West Los Angeles today on the way to the Food Coalition truck.


Last week when I arrived in Los Angeles, I wrote this:

"I'm in LA. Home. Supposedly. Though it doesn't feel like it. I look around my mom's new apartment. Different. We were walking around Hollywood to dinner this evening. Different. Did I mention, we were walking, in LA? Different!"

I was feeling what I usually feel when I first touch down in LA: awkward.

But today, with only 3 days left of my time here, I feel what I also feel before each departure, this strange well of love. The city's quirks may frustrate me, having grown up here I feel justified complaining about them, but I also understand her. I've always felt an affinity to her strangeness, perhaps it reminds me of the awkwardness that I feel in my own person, this being struggling to be greater than she is, sometimes missing miserably, other times, well...

With a few days left to go, I'm running around like crazy. (Right now, I'm at Primo Cafe on Sunset Blvd stealing some moments to myself before running off to help my Tita (Auntie) Evelyn who is volunteering at a food truck feeding the homeless). And already today, I've had morning practice with Noah Williams at Silverlake, coffee with a yoga friend Sheila, brunch with my high school girlfriend Tracy, and taught my friend Marcel a mini yoga class at Equinox next door. After the food truck, I have a late dinner with my college friend Staci in Los Feliz. And there's more over the next two days!

Everything is concentrated. Its a potent mixture of nostalgia and love. And I am thinking the unthinkable: that I like LA. Its my loved ones who live here. They make the place. They also can't help but ask the question, when are you moving back? And today, between engagements, I did catch myself wanting more time, desiring to be closer.

I don't know why, but I'm always surprised when I feel all this amazing energy. This crazy place is home to so many people that I love. And because of them I will always have roots here, anchored by their oasis-like hearts in this expansive urban desert.