when you go to the river the river is a stream of water between two cement walls, when you go to the hike the hike is a fire trail looping around a hill behind a highway, when you talk about trees, you refer to trees that have no branches and give no shade. ppl come long ways to see all this. people come long ways to put their hands on a sidewalk next to spit out gum and cigarettes and pee. they put their hands on the sidewalk and smile because they're touching stars. people come here to see everything not be what it is. anything that calls itself friendship is advertising. anything that calls itself money is cheap plastic clothes. anything that calls itself healthiest is full of catches. people come here and line up by a pink wall. talent is whatever you're pointing at. talent is whatever holds your attention. people come here and bestow upon a pink wall talent. here is a sun-bleached diorama of a psyche, eager to give, elusive, all wrapped up in ideas of itself, attention-grabbing attention-seeking, stopping then rushing then slowing then going then stopping again. we look like peeling silverlake billboards, we look like plants sprouting through highway walls. our beauty oozes out of our ugliness, our ugliness pulses in the heart of our beauty.
people roll their eyes because “la isn’t real.” people long ways here and then leave because they can’t find real friends or real nature or real art or real anything, people come here and say “what a dark superficial place.” people love all sorts of books with similes and metaphors and paradoxes. then people roll their eyes because la isn’t real. i don’t understand. didn’t you come here because la is a symbol of a dream, which is a symbol anyway for something else, something specific inside of you? did you really come to la to find real? was real it’s allure????? was it ever ever it’s promise