Song of the Open Road: June - Los Angeles

L.A., the delirious fever dream of the world.

The sun is a spotlight that never goes out. The clouds come visit sometimes, but they know when to leave.

Oranges are bursting off the trees. The orange juice there is much more radiant, closer to life than in Ohio. Not as long deceased and preserved and frozen.

Enflamed flowers. They can't stop them from growing. The sun and the flowers decorate an otherwise grungy place.

Ohio weather has such bearing on everything, such presence and dominance. The seasons arrange and shape all life. L.A. weather just kind of leaves you alone.

A relaxed, stoned vibe to everything. Very warm, low key wavelength. Like a Beach Boys song playing everywhere.

The traffic is a procession of iron and smog going everywhere at once. A great snake devouring itself. The 405 is strangely unmonumental, not a gregarious American superhighway. Everyone drives slow. You change lanes anytime you need to. Cars do not swarm.

Operatic mountains, great red martian surfaces. Roads tangled through like intestines.

It's a holy place, the Hollywood Sign. We drove up to see it in the night and it was gone, vanished into the fog.

Hollywood mirrors the night sky. There are stars in the sidewalks.

You can't hardly get a glimpse of the ocean over the wall of houses. It's like standing tip-toe in the back row of a concert.

Color everywhere. Pink, orange, green, red. Hand-painted. A surprising lack of joy. Lapped over crumbly little apartments and strip malls. Little variety in architecture. Simple shelving for people shooting for the stars.

Presumably the beauty is all hidden behind topiary walls and shubbery.

A strange continuity to the place. Few breaks in style. Even Musso and Franks looks like a shithole from the outside.

The Hollywood Hills have unbelievable roads, lashing like a county fair ride assmbled and operated by a junky.

Paint flaking off the battered walls of the Paramount lot.

The women are fucking gorgeous. Professionally gorgeous. L.A. sucks up most of the beautiful people from everywhere else. They were born that way, they might as well try and derive money from it.

People very nice and not in a fake way. I'm nobody, after all, and they treated me well.

Little altars with candles and incense and effigies and pictures of mahareshis and yogis.

Everyone is in pictures. A little girl told me how to frame a snapshot of her and her friends.

It's like the sky has been botoxed. No snow. Little cold. Just a smile, lips.