Oh me,
I woke up today thinking it was Friday. Not a fun thing for me to realize that it's only Tuesday. We went to the valley last night to sing Karaoke. Remember Apache? Well it's no longer Apache, it's now Fuel. It looks much better, one of the bartenders from Rage, Mario, now owns Fuel with some partners. James and Ginny, who used to do the Gold 9 Karaoke have the Monday nights there. Remember they did The Amnesty Party Karaoke, where you sang Hank II. Good Times.
I've been thinking lately about how fast this town changes, in part because I've been writing to you and I know how much you love this city, and how many things have changed since you last lived here. Also I've just finished reading a couple of really great books set here. The first one a book called GASCOYNE, by Stanley Crawford, it's sort of a detective noir story, with a great deal of accurate prediction of modern day LA. It was published in 1966 yet the main character GASCOYNE, basically lives in his car and jabbers constantly into his cell phone, much like we do today. Who would have thought that then? Stanley Crawford I guess. The other book is "Our Ecstatic Days" by Steve Erikson. It was really fucking phenomenal for me to read. In the beginning a puddle forms into a Lake where Hollywood Blvd. meets laurel Canyon, eventually growing large enough to submerge the city we know and love, therefore much of the story takes place in LA underwater, or more precisely, in the LA that still sits above water, such as the tower of the Chateau Marmont.
Also items like the bit about The Garden of Allah which I sent you. It gets a person thinking about just what is an individuals impact on a place with very little regard for history or consistency. I hate to see important landmarks go, (historical and personal) but I also like the change. I remember growing up in a place where nothing changed, unless something fell down. Most buildings were not even in use in my life time in rural Kansas.
I'm not really going to shatter the earth with any revelations made here, but I was thinking about it, and I thought I'd think about it with you a bit. I guess what I realize from the ever changing blinking mess we call Los Angeles is that most of us will never be able to make an impact big enough to leave a permanent mark in the architecture or landscape of this city, but all of us leave a mark on other people. Almost everyone I know came here from somewhere else and adapted to a new life, often with the help, love and encouragement of other people just like them. These marks might change a bit as the clock winds, but like one Sushi restaurant replaces another on Santa Monica Blvd, the basic structure remains.
Sometimes I feel like there are already so many ghosts here that there is not room for any new ones. I move about and look at corners where I'll always remember someone did this to someone else, and it seems like that corner will only exist to serve that memory, but then in the flash of some bizarre evening or weekend when life has me far from reflective I find myself on that very corner that forever would have been just the one memory, and in those moments I'll be making a new memory and I may be too taken with life to even stop and recall that some one said or did something unforgettable here before, in the very spot that now has a new mark, a new ghost. I guess when you really consider ghosts it would seem they don't take up much room, so there are always room for new ones.
I like the ghosts I have of you, that you left here in your time with me. Some are not so pretty, but I will endure those every time I happen to remember them on the split chance that I might get to catch a peek of one that maybe I've forgotten, one of the beautiful ones where you got to be your amazing self in full arc.
There is an amount of good fortune in your current captivity because you have time to catch your breath and think. Left to the way you were going before I don't believe you had much breath left to catch. When the issue between you and a couple Midwestern states goes off and gets itself resolved and your allowed to come back here to this town it's my hope that you will be in the place where you can sort the good ghosts from the bad, and live accordingly, happily.
***
Okay, I wrote that this morning and in hovering over the post button/envelope to deliver it to you and all 3 of my blog readers I must say I have hesitations. It's rather heavy handed, and I am certainly no person to give anybody life advice, but that said I send it because I care and I want to know that when you get out that I'll have my friend back in way where I can actually have her around and feel confident that she's going to be alright.
I was going to end with:
Don't just be straight for the stay, stay straight...
But then I looked at it and thought of the number of ways it could be taken wrong so I deleted it. Then I thought about how funny many of those ways to take it wrong actually are so I've included it.
Love Peeps,
Buck
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