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.
