they paved paradise and put up a parking lot

Various personal notes on one of my favorite places in Los Angeles -- Santa Monica (written on scrap papers, or recorded on my phone - August 2012)

16 August 2012, Thursday

First feeling: cold. First impression: too crowded. The first thing I saw as I walked down the pier was the parking lot. On the beach. Yes, on the beach. I immediately thought of Joni Mitchell's song, Big Yellow Taxi and that line. That line. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. She didn't write it for this particular place, no, she wrote it for Hawaii. But it sure feels like it was written for this one. Why is there a parking lot on the beach? I am baffled. But the expanse of sand is wide, impressive. From where I am now, the crowded-with-tourists boardwalk, the sand stretches on for miles, the outline of the valleys in the horizon. There are too many people, though. Much too much - swimming, walking on the beach, laying on the sand. It feels odd. I'm not used to crowded beaches. And I just can't seem to get over the parking lot. Why? It seems like I'll forever question this. Why, why? The sun is setting. It's blinding.

30 August 2012, Thursday

(transcribed from an audio recorded while walking on the beach)

I've been quite honest with myself (and with everyone who ever asks) in telling that I don't fancy LA so much - as a city, as a place - it's too wide, it's too hot, there's no intimacy in it. Right at this moment, I'm walking on the wide expanse of beach in Santa Monica. My friend, Jenny, told me that this is one of those beaches that locals considered 'ghetto'. It's not, basically, California's best beach and I would agree considering that the first time I went here, I was really surprised. And even more so, shocked, to see a parking lot situated in the beach. It didn't make a good first impression, not at all.

I'm looking at my left and I see the pier, the ferris wheel revolving, and the roller coaster about to take a dip - a little one, a little dip not enough to make your stomach turn. And now, I'm looking to my front and I see the fogged-down mountain ranges of the Sierras, the sun about to set. It's around 6:30 in the evening, but it's still up, the sun, it's still there; still waiting for another 30 minutes before it fully goes down. I'm walking slowly - slowly, slowly - and for the first time in two weeks, or for the first time since I got to LA, this is the moment I guess that I've been looking for, that, I don't know, 'strange red afternoon' that Jack Kerouac said. That moment where I feel like a stranger. That I feel elsewhere. That  I feel like I'm in another place. 

A seagull just flew by my head, and earlier actually, when I was walking around, they were scattered across the sand, just sitting there, and then, I suppose as I walked a little past them, they started flying, very low overhead and I think that sealed the moment for me. That, this is the moment that I was looking for. 

Through my sunglasses, I can see a lifeguard's post from far away being silhouetted by the sunlight. I can seagulls again, they're back on the sand again, not flying. I can see a couple of teenagers actually, playing frisbee. This is a really, really vast space, and far ahead I see the ocean, and considering I'm from a tropical country, I see the water a lot, but I see the sea a lot more than the ocean, and right now, I think, it's dawning at me, that hey, that's the Pacific Ocean and if I swam across I would get home. Not really. Or maybe. My dead body. Floating. Probably eaten by sharks. Not even halfway through. Yeah. Good visuals there.

To my right, there are candy-colored beach houses, to my left there's a man who's walking very slowly like me, because the sand's really tough to walk on. At least we're getting plenty of exercise. Ooh, to my left there are bikers who just passed, and rollerbladers, and runners. And I guess this is the part that I tell myself to go here every chance I get, since it's just one bus ride away from the apartment. It's a very short ride and it only costs a dollar, and yeah, just bask in it. Okay, I just saw from far away in the water that there's a sailboat right underneath the sun's reflection in the water, what do you call that? That. It looks pretty good. 

So yeah, I guess this is my California moment number one. California magic moment number one. And I thought I should remember it by doing this. Ha, the birds' footprints are embedded on the sand and I'm walking past them and there are a lot of prints. There's still a good stretch of sand ahead of me and I'm walking toward the end, where it meets the water, to the direction of where the sun is actually, and probably just sit and stare and look at the ocean and look at the view, and be thankful? Feel alive? Feel as if life is changing, or I am changing, or that this is something that will change me, or something that I'll remember? Yeah. So, 'til next magic moment I suppose. 

31 August 2012, Friday

I found a place. There is a place. A place where it is okay to cry because of words you didn't write, but hits you squarely in the face (in the feels, as they call it these days). There is a place. A place where I consumed three Dandelion & Burdocks in one sitting as I flip through a book of poetry. There is a place. It's not hidden, but it's a secret spot, still. There is a place. A place tucked somewhere in the color and happiness of the pier. A place where the water crashes to the sand below you, seafoam forming, providing good background music as you read. A place where the sunlight hits you like a bullseye as it starts to set. There is a place, there is a place. I found my place.

i'd be safe and warm if i was in LA

Los Angeles from up above looks neat and organized--buildings and houses look like Monopoly pieces, trees and shrubbery are strategically placed on sidewalks. Everything is placed within blocks, a far cry from Manila's cluttered streets. The city looks low, lower than London could ever be, except for downtown with its sky-high buildings all clustered in the middle.

From inside the plane, you can already feel the heat of California's post-noon sun. The sunshine is blinding even inside, and out the window, into the view of the wide and looping-in-the-middle freeways that cut right through the expanse of neat suburbia, the light hits the glossy finish of the cars making them glimmer and glisten, like jewels on the move, so fast, so fast. 

As the plane took a turn, the view changed from cityscape and typical American suburban landscape to the stretch of the mountain range that hugged and nestled the city, giving it the warmth it has always known. 

California is warm. Late summer heat singed my skin as I stepped out of the stuffy aircraft and onto American soil. A photo of President Obama, an American flag, and a picture message of the bald eagle from an American friend welcomed me. Freedom!, they all cried (or at least that's what I heard inside my head). But it didn't smell like freedom from this side of the world, no. It smelled like gummy bears, it smelled like the Duty Free from back home. Come on, show me what you've got America, I said to myself, or maybe, subconsciously, to America herself.

And she did--or at least, Los Angeles did show me what she's got, or snippets of what to expect. Less than two hours in the city and I've experienced how bad the traffic could be at the 405, how Flyaway buses have internet connection that allowed me to tweet while stuck in rush hour traffic (the kid in the third world was impressed, of course), and how fast and rude some LA drivers could be. It was an amusing welcome treat. Honest and blatant.

From the ground, Los Angeles looked scattered with its wide streets and alleys, far apart establishments, and cars, cars everywhere. It's obviously not a walkable city, which saddened me considering how much I love to walk around and get lost. But then, the sun started setting as we drove down Wilshire and any sad thought was wiped out as we passed through the posh neighborhoods and shopping spots of West LA. I had to forget everything and instead bask in the glow of my first Californian sundown. 

As I watched this part of town zoom past my taxi window, tinged in golden light, I thought, this is it, this is my home for a while. And as the taxi stopped at my new tree-and-car lined neighborhood, as the seven p.m. sunset sneaked through the bush right outside the apartment and scattered light beams on the ground, it finally kicked in: the American adventure begins.

"You [boys] going to get somewhere, or just going?"

Everything begins somewhere.

It was a photograph of the ruins of Machu Picchu in the National Geographic book Excursion to Enchantment that ignited my desire to roam. It was the words of Pico Iyer, Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, Jon Krakauer and Anne Mustoe. It was the films of Woody Allen & Richard Linklater and the music of songwriters and bands I loved that urged me to pack my bags and just go.  

They all told tales of journeys so different and exciting, I lived vicariously through their words and photographs for years. Getting lost in African jungles, basking in the emptiness of Icelandic provinces, cycling through Patagonia, and hitchhiking in the backwoods of America—different tales of different people with different perspectives all with one goal—to go away. Maybe to seek something—adventure, spontaneity, freedom—or to just bask in the simplicity of being on the road, of being elsewhere. Their journeys, either presented through words, photographs or music, enchanted me at a young age and made me promise myself that I’ll go there one day; I’ll go to all the places I’ve read about and seen. It’s a promise yet to be, but slowly, being fulfilled.

It began from road trips with family to out-of-town journeys with friends, casual travels in my own country that would later evolve to out-of-the-country misadventures to solo trips to faraway lands without solid plans, enough money and people to run to. In short, complete independence.

There is a certain level of fear that comes with traveling independently. The not knowing could start self-doubts and restlessness. Personally however, I like this mystery of travel—of not knowing where you're going, not knowing anyone and at the same time, anyone not knowing you. As scary or crazy as it could be, there is a certain satisfaction figuring out that you can roam a city, a country on your own, at your own pace and by your own means. It’s like a primer to being acquainted with oneself for it teaches you to trust yourself and know your strengths, it teaches you to be open-minded. It teaches you to see and experience things differently, not as a tourist but as a traveler, an explorer of the world. Most importantly, it gives you a taste of what freedom is like.

I’ve read it in the books, I’ve heard it in music, and have seen it in films, but feeling freedom and experiencing it on your own is a much different thing. It’s stronger. It pulls you. For me, it came in little doses, in little moments, almost fragments—in strange encounters with interesting people, or that few good minutes of a drive when the wind is rushing to my face that I feel it contort in different ways or when a place is painted a certain color of orange or yellow that it reminded me of certain childhood summers; or while jumping around rain puddles while singing my favorite tune or while trespassing castle grounds late Sunday nights.

Moments like these are the reason why I tread on through, why I continue to travel and why I see travel as something beautiful. Maybe it’s romanticism, but I live for these moments, they nourish one’s soul. I collect them and possess them for they’re like bookmarks; reference points to when I felt most alive, when I felt free. And once you feel freedom, it’s hard to stop. The longing to be away, to feel it again intensifies once you come home to your routine. That’s why I see no reason to stop, now or maybe, ever.

That's why I've decided, yet again, to pack my bags for yet another journey... this time, to Kerouac's land, to America. I plan to cross the country, from California to New York and back, almost a reverse of the original On The Road trail, stopping by tiny towns and big cities, hopping on trains and buses as I go. I have a month of planning left, but right now I can honestly say, that I am looking forward to the feeling of freedom yet again.