green line blues

[gurdonark]

I'm spending a few stray moments in a Kinko's in downtown Los Angeles answering work and personal e mails prior to plunging into further preparation for my hearing this afternoon. I flew to LA through El Paso last night on a free flight coupon I'd earned. One of the great arcane secrets of the Illuminated Travellers is that they make great red chili enchiladas *in an El Paso airport*. This is right up there with the beans and rice in Belize City International. On the plane, I struggled but could not get through the elaborate southernisms of Melinda Haynes "Chalktown". Her childhood Mississsippi may have been like my Arkansas, but one can love Flannery O'Connor and still not want to read her imitators. The "real" new South novel has not yet been written, though Jack Butler's "Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock" comes very close.

I landed late last night and went to one of the numerous LAX major chain
hotels at which priceline.com will put me up when I tell it I don't really want to pay very much money for a room but must have 3 stars. This morning, the hotel lobby was filled, as airport hotel lobbies tend to be, with Asian and European tourists. I decided to be "green" today, and to ride the "green line" and "blue line" light rail systems into downtown. These are charming rides, although definitely not an express route downtown vis a vis renting a car as I usually do.

At the elevated LAX "green line" station (located a busride away from LAX, needless to say), the concrete chairs were arranged like patio furniture. A piece of transparent plastic wall was printed with Langston Hughes' poem "What Happens to a Dream Deferred?". I thought to myself how instead of turning into a "raisin in the sun" or just exploding, as the poem suggests, most deferred dreams probably pay the one dollar and sixty cents for the ticket and transfer to downtown Los Angeles.

As I passed by dying palm trees planted in inappropriate places to provide a scenic view for the "blue line", I thought the trees said something about Los Angeles--a place I love, but a place of misplaced pathways and
dying palmtree dreams. But then the train moved from depressed apartments and faded storefronts and churches that had seen better days to a quick, lively view of the Watts Rose Garden, and I realized that things bloom in the oddest, but most wonderful places.

Comments

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

Your posts, and a few other people's are why I remain on Live Journal. To me, THIS, is what it was meant to be. Thank you.

LJ is fun

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I am grateful for LJ not only because I meet nice people like you,but also
because it makes me write something besides the way to apply the priority scheme in California Insurance Code Section 1033 :)

dreams deferred

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

I like to think mine "crust and sugar over--like a syrupy sweet." That's one of my favorite poems. And in reading lately about what happens to the body after death, I've been thinking a lot about deferment and dying and what it all really means, if anything. Although, I always cling to the notion that there is meaning, that there simply must be meaning, and sometimes it takes an explosion to light the way to the truth. And cycles. The cyclical nature of it all, even a dream deferred.

Re: dreams deferred

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

My own dreams were always more crusted over, like sugar sweet.
My own worldview, unimportant as it is, is that there is infinite meaning.
It's perception that's in short supply :)

[taebopper.livejournal.com]

That was absolutely beautiful!! Symbolic of what LA truly is (though I still love the city). I enjoyed reading it.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I love LA, too....lived there for ten years....but it is such a maze of contradictions! Thanks so much for commenting...oh, and hi :)

OMGOMG!@!!!

[inushnu.livejournal.com]

YOU'RE IN MY CITY!!!!! DAMNIT! Are you going to be here on friday cause maybe we could do lunch?? I have the whole day off and nothing but cramps to medicate... awwww come on!! I can pick you up in my little geo metro and whisk you away for an hour!

yes? :D

Re: OMGOMG!@!!!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I just got your comment when I arrived back in Dallas. Sorry we can't do lunch this time, but I'm in LA often for work, so perhaps another time :)

city streets

[voodoukween.livejournal.com]

again you capture a microcosm in the macrocosm of LA, a bit of a bus ride that could be in any of the rambling districts

your attention to detail is splendid

i will be there myself again in two weeks to delight in the Warhol retrospective with my dear brother and his girls

Re: city streets

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I wish so much I had had time to see that Warhol retro. It sounds simply fab! Let me know what you think of it. I really think he had his finger on the pulse of something, though I'm not sure what "something" is....

Re: city streets

[voodoukween.livejournal.com]

i think he was a "trend setter", something about disillusionement and dada

i will send you something about it