Which LA are you from?

For as long as I can remember, Los Angeles has been a source of confusion for me, especially when people ask, “Where are you from?”  I have a feeling of déjà vu when people ask this because it’s a moment that I’ve experienced a thousand thousand times.

I give complete answer, beginning with “that’s kind of complicated”, infrequently nowadays.  “I’ve lived in LA most of my life but feel like I’ve just been visiting here.  You see, my mother tongue is French even though none of my relatives are French … I was born in Georgia yet never had a Southern Accent. … I feel more at home in Greece even though I’ve never lived there and don’t speak the language.” blah blah blah.  That’s my problem, I think, too much blah blah blah.

Here in LA, the second or third question that a stranger will always ask me is, “What do you do?” because here the kind of work you do defines who you are.  I say or third question because some people place a greater importance on astrological sign (of course, the first question is “What is your name?”).

A little bit further along the conversation, people will ask, “What part of town do you live in?” because LA really is a very tiny city.  Here, I speak of the downtown area (where I live) that is an island in a sea of suburbia.  But really, us urbanites are a very tiny minority, and all those suburbs are pretty much the same.  They get in their cars to go shopping in a strip mall, mini-mall, outdoor mall, mega-mall, etc., to see their suburban friends, to work out, bicycle, walk, have a coffee, preferably one that they can take to go unless they’re carrying a laptop to get caught up on office work or finish up that latest script.

Really, which suburb you live in makes no difference because they’re pretty much all the same (except of course in terms of money; Boyle Heights and Palos Verdes are on radically different ends of the money spectrum even though each sits atop a hill).  No, I think the better question should be, “Which LA are you from?”  There are two radically different LAs that you can be from, with 32 variations on a theme that is a hybrid of the two.

First, there are the 9-to-5ers who have a regular job.  They generally live the kind of ordinary lives that can be found throughout the world.  Some make more and others make less. Some spend more than they make, and others less.  Generally their lives revolve around fairly predictable concerns such as spending money, getting money, counting down the next vacation, finding the ideal guy/gal (in all those varied flavors), or planifying (planify isn’t a real word but is has a cool sound so I’m going to use it) the child’s week to the nth degree, and so on and so forth.  They are very sensible people who consume vast amounts of time watching entertainment but frankly acknowledge that they have a better chance of finding Big Foot in the backyard freezer than they do becoming a celebrity.

Second, there are the I-Have-a-Dreamers who are here to be a big actor, screenwriter, rock star, model, and so on and so forth.  They come here by the truck load, thousands arrive here every day, and almost as many return home each day disillusioned, heart broken, and broke.

Jennifer (that’s not her real name) is typical.  She worked here as a production assistant on commercials, often running around town to pick up the dry cleaning of some producer, really, it’s all about dirty laundry.  Her grandmother across the pond was always nagging her to come to back and marry a nice Cypriot boy and make lots of Greek babies.  One day she came to me so proud about her new clothes.

“I didn’t pay anything for them!  After the commercial was done, they let me keep some of the merchandise.”  The down side, however, was that she made much less than minimum wage when you actually added up all those hours she worked.  Now she’s got a new job in Cyprus, busy working to ensure that the Greek race never ends.

And then there is that curious breed of I-Have-a-Dreamers who half-heartedly transition to be 9-to-5ers.

Roger finished college in New York to be a playwright and stage director, he ended up working as a substitute teacher for years and years.  One friend, an architect, tells me about how her flat mate drives her crazy, walking around the downtown loft in high heel shoes, going to parties through the night and sleeping during the day, trying to become a big singer.  Another friend, an architect from Switzerland, spent thousands of dollars for “acting lessons” and two years of his life before he got back on the plane.

Some manage to make the transition, like the physical therapist turned personal trainer who sings and composes on the side. She’s quite good, good enough to get into the Minor Leagues, but frankly acknowledges that she’ll never make it into the Majors of the entertainment industry.  She represents a perfectly evolved Angelino, doing quite well as a personal trainer to neurotic people with too much money and time on their hands, and on the side she plays her guitar, composes music, and gives performances every now and then.  She has self-actualization, which is a fancy way of saying that she’s happy.

Many shall seek, but few will find.

I go to cafés in Hollywood sometimes; actually I work just blocks from the Kodak Theatre. But I don’t like the ambiance that much. There is such a nervous tension, anxiety fills the air and seeps into your pores.  You can see them stroking their laptops as if they were crystal balls, finishing up a script, worried about how much longer the money will hold out, how many more acting classes and auditions lie ahead of them before the “big break” or … well, best not to talk about that.

One friend came here from the east coast and works behind the scenes on commercials and sometimes movies, but she wants to become a singer.  “I’m tired of working around those self-centered superficial bags of anxiety,” she tells me.  ‘Well, the pay is good, but I only work about fifty percent of the time.  Actually, I’m thinking of getting a real job, but the problem is, I don’t know what I want.”

“Have you thought about becoming a personal trainer?” I asked her.

Mountain Top Treasure

[I wrote this back when I was fishing up in the Bering Sea]

Dawn’s golden rays cast off the lethargy that was my bedfellow,
I jump off the boat and my heart races with joy,
For a few hours I am free of her tyranny
Having labored of late with weary heart
upon the ice cold silvery sea that is my home.
My feet caress the earth.
My hands dance in the wind.

The constant roar of my mistress’ twin engines
Fades in the distance as my world fills with color
Rocky cliffs mark the border of this island.
The arctic tundra is green and soft upon my feet.
Those long luxurious strands stroke my waist.
My senses savor the moment.
My heart is at peace.

I march up the mountain in search of you.
No trees on this island do I behold.
Winter’s fury long ago banished them away,
Now that Ice Queen sleeps as the sun never sets.
I reach the summit and see my emptiness.
My love lies beyond the horizon,
But her heart I hold in tender embrace.

40 days and 40 nights

The first day of spring was only days away, but Eternal Winter stood guard outside as I picked up the phone. If you were quiet then you could hear the incessant rain pelting the red phone booth as I plunked down a few pounds into the pay phone. “What are you doing in Manchester?” my cousin Merkouris asked me, though of course I understood him to be asking me why on Earth would I travel to anyplace other than Greece if I were actually on vacation.

“It’s a girl,” I said.

I wasn’t the proud father of a newborn clothed in pink. Over Christmas I had traveled 10,000 km from Los Angeles to Manchester in order to meet the Ana of Peru who pretty much single-handedly got my master’s thesis back on track. So it was that as Christmas approached I went to Manchester to meet My Best Friend while in spring it was to see My Girl. As winter turned to spring, nine days we shared in Manchester, Edinburgh, and Paris. And before I returned back to Los Angeles, we were talking about the next time we would meet.

Plans don’t just happen as a consequence of pushing a start button nor by adding an item to a To Do list. They are messy, complicated, dirty, and always surprising, full of complex emotions and passion, for they reflect the chaos and primeval force that is Life Itself. I made a plan to spend the summer with her. Over the next few months that plan grew like a stalk of corn lately sprung from the moist earth until it was ripe for harvest, until that day in June I once again found myself at Los Angeles International Airport, one hand clutching a passport as I dragged my bags ever closer to the ticket counter.

40 days and 40 nights I spent over there, in England and Greece. 40 is a special number for in times past it signified completeness. It is said that Jesus spent 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness, preparing himself to realize the meaning of his life. But this number had meaning long before the second people of the Book sprang to life, like rocks tossed upon the earth by Deucalion and Pyrrha after that other 40 days and 40 nights had passed. I searched long and hard for travel dates between late June and early August. Having found the cheapest dates of departure and return, I marveled that by chance they totaled 40 days and 40 nights. I wondered if perhaps it were a sign.

A line is but an infinite set of points bound together as condemned workers in a chain gang who will never break free. And at times my line seemed like a stream of random points in time bound together by Fates silently laughing at me, without meaning, without reason.

During the 40 days and 40 nights, I did not waste time ordering those points into meaningful pattern, trying to understand. Rather, I lived. I wasn’t a traveler, traveling. Rather, I was a human, being. Fui un humano ser, siendo. When I saw the smile of my niece Maria, “O Theo Alex …” as she rushed to hug me after four years away from Greece, I felt so alive. This feeling I experienced many times … when my beautiful Ana cried upon reading Bebito y Sunshine inscribed within the ring she cradled in her hand, when I drank an espresso at the Oklahoma Café having at last found real bread in Manchester, when I splashed cool water on those tender strands of hair as the blinding white heat atop the Acropolis wilted her from head to toe, when I read an email announcing the death of a close friend to cancer as I was searching for shoes in London, when I taught her to swim in the magical waters of the Aegean holding that sweet frame in my arms so that black spines might not pierce her delicate feet, when I heard a group of Africans signing an impromptu Beatles medley in The Cavern of Liverpool, when I sat upon the balcony of my uncle Dimitri in Thessaloniki tasting apricot jam as the morning light crept upon the trees from whence came that heavenly taste, when I felt the pain of separation from her realizing that indeed I must share the rest of my life with this one person, when I saw the same through her eyes.

What indeed do 40 days and 40 nights mean?

It means simply that my time of preparation is over. And now I am ready to bend the bow and set foot once more at home upon the rocky island that exists in the imagination of all men, forging anew a tether to earth so that I might not float away into nothing.

I think about my friend who died in her youth, dreams now wilting within a crypt like unripened fruit condemned to eternal rot, never becoming pregnant with the warmth of a Summer’s day. I shall never forget the tears upon her milky white skin, Death fast approaching, as she said to the priest, “I don’t want to die,” holding my hand with a savage burst of energy.

As for me, I know not the number of my days. Yet I know that my purpose is to live, nothing more and nothing less. I know that my 40 days and 40 days have at last passed, and now I am ready.

disfruta la vida que son cuatro días