Los Angeles
They sparkle like diamonds and it hurts!
Perhaps you know it, that longing that washes over you every time you think of Los Angeles. The city of sunshine and palm trees and a feeling that something, something might happen to me today. The light, the energy, the streets, the movies, the shows, the sunsets, the people, the food, the ocean, the hills, the dusty trails, the poison oak, the winding roads up in Malibu.
I’ve written about L.A. before. It is hard to write about L.A. — somehow there is no point. You have to live it, in it, for years to begin to understand it. It is still my favorite city on Earth, and my heart is filled with tears of some inexplicable longing every time I remember my first home in the U.S. Out there on the Pacific Coast. Out there in California.
California. It makes me think of foggy morning hiking up on the ridges in Pacific Palisades and above Mandeville Canyon. When you are wrapped in fog and sage brush scents and everything is still. Even birds are quiet. When you breathe in damp perfumed (by nature) air and look out over the hills out there, and see the Pacific glisten. Your eyes bounce off hill after hill — where the fires are now — until they sparkle like diamonds and it hurts. It hurts to think of L.A. I love L.A.
My sci-fi anthologies: Errante and No End Code
