Cities
I've not much to write about tonight; I want to get to bed early. (Early. Ha...) I moved the plants to this makeshift rolling cart that I was planning to toss anyway. I sort of tucked them behind the arborvitae bush; maybe no one will notice them there and I won't come home one day to see that the Style Cops have tossed my Future Pesto Ingredients. It rained more or less all day today, and was in general a welcome relief from the usual scalding heat, though the office was freezing.
One day I will have a picture of the new car up, while it is still new. Only 59 months of payments to go!
I should put a picture of She Who Must Be Obeyed (my cat) up, just to keep things traditional; it's my internet site, and it's all about me! I know you all care so much!!! But really, she must turn the TV on and watch Animal Planet or something that has those Cute Pet shows, because she has this habit of curling up in these �ber-cute poses, belly up, paws-over-face kind of stuff. It's as if she is saying, "I know just what you can't resist. Now stop looking at the big, glowing box! Stare at Me, your reason for living!" I hope she gives me a nice position in the slave galley when her people come down in their spaceships to take over the earth.
I had a thought earlier today: that I have been to several cities, and I wanted to describe whatever was their singular atmosphere, or attitude, or "vibe," that I noticed. Not all of them seemed to have anything distinct about them. For instance, I was in Lexington, Kentucky recently, and I can't remember the town having a special vibe. It had some nice, old homes, a rather depressing defunct mall, and a large university. But I can't remember getting any "vibe" from it. Maybe I was too preoccupied with seeing U2 (my reason for being there) to take notice.
The town with the most distinctive vibe that I have been to is New Orleans. I can't really put it into words either. There was a haunted quality that I never felt anywhere else. Music was everywhere, and it all sounded good - even music that sets my teeth on edge anywhere else, such as zydeco. Also, it felt that just around the corner, death waited, but a friendly, relaxed sort of death. Well, that was a feeble attempt at description.
Where I am living now, not even Orlando but "Central Florida" - a series of small towns surrounds Orlando and sort of makes up the "Greater Orlando Area" - doesn't really seem like an actual city. It's mostly subrbia - nothing wrong with that but it's mostly too new to have any character of its own. They are trying, with the Vietnamese area near downtown, and Cinco De Mayo parades, etc., for some sort of cosmopolitan we're-a-big-city flavor, but the effort has the whiff of "theme park lite" hanging over it.
Washington D.C. and Los Angeles both reminded me of Miami, my home town. Miami in it's irritable, political flavor has that D.C.-south thing going for it, and the crime helps! But in Miami, at least, the denizens of the I-95 crack neighborhoods haven't taken to stealing all the street signs yet. (That's another story which I will get to at another time.) Los Angeles was Miami with mountains, and a rather laughable beach. (As in, where's the... I mean, the beach looked about a foot wide.) There were the same little bungalow-type homes, the same plants, the same architecture (because builders in Miami tend to slavishly imitate that California-Mediterranean style), the same lousy traffic. Only the Cuban restaurant I went to was staffed by Mexicans.
The most notable part of the atmosphere of LA was Money. As in, that's what matters in this town - nothing but the bottom line. I have no objection to that but it made me wonder why the place is such a magnet for moonbeams with visions of "stardom," who, when they fill out "occupation" on a form, write in "waitress/actress" or "busboy/screenwriter." Any notion of the Mystique of Tinseltown evaporated the minute I set foot in the place. I got no sense that Great Art was to be found there, or Culture, as the term is traditionally understood. Such exists in LA, I'm sure, but it's not really important to the powers that run the town. Art comes second to marketing in Hollywood. There's nothing wrong with that, only with the fact that so many people seem unaware of it. If I had ever wanted to be an actress one trip to LA would have scared me out of the profession, but then maybe I lack fortitude.
Ugh - that's enough for now. My grammar is more awkward than usual, which means I really need sleep. Nighty-night.