FULL BLEED: I DON'T GET IT

Yeah, I guess that title has broad application these days. Maybe too much so.

Drove down to Los Angeles last week. Normally that's a thing that I'm excited about. I'm not there often enough for my tastes, as most of my friends are down there and I'm some three hundred plus miles to the north as the Challenger drives. I was driving down this time because there was one fewer of them to visit and it was time to say goodbye. Only I wasn't there yet and not clear on when I'm gonna be. I won't be talking about the service and the cloud of circumstance and emotion that found a locus around it. I'll talk about everything else. Just you watch.

I have a nice car. Okay, it's not the nicest. It's not luxurious, in particular, perhaps but for the indulgence of horsepower and retro-inspired design. I don't have the black thumb (as described in Fury Road and Furiosa) to keep a classic in tune and running. And I'd probably be afraid to drive one of them down the road as much as I drive this one. Anyways, I've always wanted to drive it down to LA and give it a real workout. Never really happened when the kids were in the house. And for some reason my wife and I haven't taken it down on our drives (probably because there's more trunk space in our other car, better gas mileage, and it's a much more low-key ride, less likely to draw attention or even flies as passing through the central valley on the way down.)

But this time I was driving down alone so I took the opportunity to drive the Challenger down. I should've done it before, really. Even with a stick shift, it's easy enough to drive in traffic, and it's got the giddyup to shoot gaps and take advantage of the dead spots behind the giant clots of traffic that form on freeways. Surely you've noticed, should you spend any time on a free-moving stretch of highway. There's clusters of cars like schools of fish, all hanging together. Then there's that beautiful dead space between one school and the next. You time it right and you can glide there for a long time. It's the best. Almost like you have the road to yourself. Granted, that's not happening so much during rush hour, but there's times when it does and it's beautiful. Music on and shimmering concrete just opening up.

Only got a bit of that on the drive down. Lots of business around Fresno, for some reason. Kinda slow. Kinda hot. More than kinda dusty. Felt like a glimpse of post-water California. Which we all know is coming. The aquifer is only going to take so many straws for so long. Won't be anything to do about it before it comes because nobody believes that it's coming. Fingers pointed, farmers at the governor, at the customers, at the absent God who isn't saving anything. There's a combination of arcane and archaic law and demand and nature only replenishing so much and all those pistachio orchards gotta be watered. You can export those. Good yields. Good value per acre. Until those tariffs.

I tried not to think too much about the reason for going down. Can't say I actually did or didn't.

Made it to Burbank, flipped the radio over to K-EARTH 101 for awhile. Heard "Thriller" for the first of what would be three times during my visit. I guess the kids love those Halloween classics. Staying close to Media Center, which has lots of places to eat, but doesn't feel like a real place at all. I know people live there. I just don't get why. Ersatz place that points at history with plaques in place hearkening to the early 1900s, more than a century ago, but you look and you can't see much of it. Yeah, if you get a little ways off, you can find City Hall and there's some Deco touches there, some pre-postwar modernity and futurity. But it's not a place for people to live. Just pass through. We're all passing through, right?

Dinner at Guisado's, which I've only had at their downtown location previously. Really excellent, but y'know, expensive. Everything's expensive. Everything costs. Oh, right. Guisado's is tacos, on the fancy side, but not stunt casting tacos like say Torchy's (which I enjoy but it's more a theme park feel than a place to go and eat.) Pibil chicken, chorizo and a third flavor that I'm not recalling. Little on the small side, maybe three-four bite tacos, but excellent fillings and really outstanding corn tortillas. Nice to come back to.

Just walked up and down San Fernando a bit in the middle of town shooting pictures. But if you're a local, you know that San Fernando, once you get past central Burbank, is its own kind of place. Tom Waits once wrote a song about a guy named Frank who bought a house along that road then burned it down before heading north. There's a motor court motel that might even still be standing that's been filmed in a handful of things, from some straight to video semi-skin actioners to City of Industry (always a favorite for nailing a time and place) and I think even the adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely from the seventies. Is that history? Is that a real place or just a place that got made unreal but is sticking in my head as something genuine? Rhetorical.

Thought about driving maybe over to Ventura Blvd or somewhere else nearby but I was simply to goddamn tired and on the hot side still, so I went back to the room and told the climate control to make it cold enough for me to sleep in which took some time. Things would look better tomorrow, right? They're sure supposed to.

Got up to meet a friend for breakfast at a place along Victory Boulevard. Watched a couple crows arguing on a powerline, or maybe they were laughing or just wondering what the hell I was doing in the neighborhood. Crows are usually up to no good, someone once told me. Oh yeah, the guy who got a whole paragraph out of crows being crooks is dead, which is why I was in town. Breakfast of pancakes the size of a grown man's face and the usual others that my doctor would probably tell me to lay off, so let's not bring that up. Talking about movies and books and how all those things are imploding but somehow still continuing, just like water being pumped out of the ground fast as they can, like they can outrace what's coming.

Side trip to Hollywood Book and Poster, which has used up a few of its lives at this point. I was even surprised to hear they were still open, though in a somewhat diminished footprint these days. Still worth a visit. Came out with a few treasures, including a signed copy of Samuel Z. Arkoff's biography. Touched by the hand of Sam himself. Maybe some of that brazenness will pass to me when I really need it next.

Went back to his place and hung out for a bit. Pet a big black cat and then found out that I was chosen to be a big black cat holder for the better part of an hour. Pretty sure one of my legs went dead in the process. Drove over to the Silverlake slash Atwater Village slash Los Feliz confluence to attend the service and deliver a thing I'd volunteered to drive down (really why I ended up driving, as much as the air traffic controller sickout at Burbank made it an inevitability.) And I'll stop there other than to say that funerals are for the living. Should we cross paths and you wanna buy me a drink, I'll sit down with you and explain. Or maybe it needs no explaining.

Back to Burbank and first time eating Zankou Chicken, which was very tasty but for I'm guessing too much coriander in their harissa sauce which got my allergies/intolerances going. Between that and the events of the day, I really didn't have all that much sleep. Vivid dreams where I can tell that the night shift, the unconscious, my writing partner, was trying to put pieces together. Big ones, bricks cut for giant masons to make structures without name. But that's living life, right? Everything's too big to take in the moment. Takes time to find leverage and purchase if you do at all.

Early morning walk in too-hot Burbank morning taking pictures of anything that would hold still. Went some places that are inexplicably set up for pedestrian traffic but are clearly and absolutely meant for people not to go. Un-place. But you can get some good shots there. Pair of train tracks gleaming in the early sun so that shine is all you can make out. The makeshift colored windows on the sunny side of a recycled metal warehouse and plant, almost midcentury modernist stained glass design and I'm sure if I made that comparison to anyone working there, I'd have gotten some funny looks. Like I said, totally normal range of photographic subjects.

Breakfast at a second place on Victory Boulevard, strangely about two blocks from yesterday's place. Cafe de Olla this time, which is named for a coffee that's brewed with cinnamon added and conchilla (brown sugar cones that are broken up and make things real sweet.) I had too much of it, as I'd come to find later. See, coffee doesn't actually hydrate. But that's a lesson for some hours in the future. More talk with another friend in writing, about how nothing makes sense but there's still work out there, just less of it and some really strange decisions being made. Parted, not having solved the meltdown in writing and publishing, unsurprisingly, and went back to the room to stare at the wall for a little while. About all I was up for.

Off later, to the Iliad Bookstore, which is a favorite spot of mine and has been since the nineties, back when they used to be at the crazy intersection of Lankershim and I want to say Cahuenga, but that's wrong. Maybe it's Riverside. It's been a few years, sorry. Came out with too many books. Oh, darn. Big finds? I guess maybe the souvenir magazine for Dune (1984) was the biggest. Not the Marvel Comics adaptation, but part synopsis, part behind-the-scenes, part lots of stills. Pretty cool, really.

Drove down to Sunset to meet up with another friend. Time to kill before, so I had the bright idea of walking about a mile or so down and then back, while it's in the mid eighties with mostly bright sun and not a lot of wind and not much shade, certainly no water. Feels like that chunk of Sunset was re-wilding in sections, benign neglect of old sites having just slid over to straight neglect. Not really the most welcoming chunk of the boulevard, but lots of interesting photo subjects, which I tracked down instead of pacing myself. By the time I met up, I was close to dead on my feet. Sucked down a liter of water and really should have had a couple more. Yet I didn't.

Talked about how ultimately we as writers and artists have to keep going and that's some real Sam Beckett moments there. "I can't go on. I must go on." It's not a motivational poster, folks. That's a curse. That's a command that we might not be able to touch the source of, but is burning inside all the same. It makes no sense. It's the only thing that makes sense (or I've been good at, speaking for myself.) AI ain't ever gonna know about 3am staring at the ceiling feelings and trying to fight that by scratching out anything you can on the stuff of time itself. It's just going to puke out slop. Is that why humans will win? I dunno. But it's at least the foundation for humans knowing why they're doing the things they do.

Drove out to Pasadena to meet a Bluesky mutual and pass along a thing. Oh, what was the time? It was about 4pm. Yes. Driving from Hollywood to Pasadena at just shy of rush hour. And I was pointed the wrong way down Sunset. Funny, but the phone said, okay, just head east and it'll be fine. I don't know if you know this, but you might be able to flip a U on Sunset at 3:30am on a weeknight. I wouldn't put money down on other times. So it shoved me up Highland instead (which was an intersection I'd passed earlier and said to myself "Gee, I pity the poor bastard who's gotta drive this this time of day.") It was me. I was the poor bastard I was pitying. Up Highland to the 101 to Barham, which was really no better. Anyways, this was a bad choice, but I'd committed to it and sitting in the air-conditioned car was kinda nice so what the hell.) All the way out to Pasadena and delivery made and I turned around to go back and meet another friend at the tourist end of Hollywood Boulevard. Getting back wasn't so bad, really.

Hollywood Boulevard, at least at that end, down by Orange Av., is trying very hard to be a tourist destination. I mean, it is what it is. It's a tourist destination with giant souvenir shops and a wax museum and sidewalk vendors, Mann's Chinese Theater and the El Capitan theater (both showing Tron: Ares which was certainly a choice). And it's got street people and folks who are clearly in need of help that they're never going to get. It's the whole deal. Bright neon and Scientology and despair. Actual history and a future that's hanging on by its fingernails. Gimme the Alpha to the Omega. I want it all. I want those bronze stars at my feet and those names that won't ever be surpassed as well as those whose publicists laid out the lettuce to get placed (or so the counter-mythology goes.) And that's just the shiniest end of the Boulevard. I'd make the walk down to the Theater District later on, the stretch between the two being considerably less glitzy, kind of like dumbbell concentrations of glitter and a long handle which is in some ways more interesting or at least useful.

Had an old-fashioned and dinner at Boardner's, which has been in Hollywood since 1942. Apparently Bogie was a big fan. Oldschool place, original neon sign out front, well-lit Deco-style bar (and largely intact interior) made it for a cozy place to take some weight off my feet for a while. Talk about How Things Look from my friend's perspective and yeah, well, not great. Like I said, nobody knows about when the music's gonna stop or what it'll look like. If this is as bad as it's going to get or if it'll get a whole lot worse before it gets better. But agreement on the fact that the guys in charge right now don't know what to do, don't know how to fix things and are probably trying to rip the copper out of the walls to pad out their bonuses. It was a good talk. I mean, it was terrifying, but it was also good to talk to someone else who wasn't insane, was able to look out the window and see what was going on and say "Yeah, this is all not good" instead of the latest quarterly report where people who are definitely not lying say that things are fine.

Parted ways after dinner so that I could walk some more. Keep in mind I've had too much cafe de olla, an old-fashioned, a liter of water and a tiny little plastic glass of water as a sidecar to my drink and dinner. I should have stayed at the bar and just ordered pitchers of water even if they were five buck per and drank them and gone back to my room then sit in a bath. I did not do this. I walked and took another some hundred and fifty pictures. Neon, mostly. Geometry and geography. Trying to make sense of my sense of the place. Betty Boop at life size in a second-story shop window, ringed by bright pink neon. Tattoo parlors and nightclubs. Boutiques where you could make a new you, psychic readers and the Hollywood Preservation Society and just slots that were empty, waiting to be repurposed (though a lot fewer of those than I'd seen on Sunset earlier.) Walking back, I was a zombie. But I made it back to my room, windows down finally and just breathing in the skin-temperature air, tempered by the smell of the hot-dog vendor and pizza shops and whatever combination of spilled drinks and grease had marinated the asphalt I was flying over.

I at least did sit in the bathtub back in the room. I sat there in the dark for a long time, listening to the Pink Opaque by the Cocteau Twins. My head was already hurting.

Woke with a hangover, which was completely unfair. One lousy drink. Okay, it was one good drink, really. But... come on. Yes, I know it was the sun and the dehydration that really did it. Still, not fair. Hobbled to breakfast and more water than coffee for awhile. Picked up an apple from the farmer's market up the street, convincing myself that it was really okay, that I was eating healthy. See? Apple. Healthy.

Was supposed to go to the Skirball Center and see the Jack Kirby exhibit. I did not. I went to take pictures of the Victorians in Angeleno Heights. Some of these places are so old they still have hitching posts at the sidewalk (and there probably wasn't a sidewalk or solid road when they'd first been built.) See, I was trying to find a model for the haunted house in my current work in progress (which used to be called The Missing Pieces but will probably be called My Gifts Are Hungry, original title do not steal.) I'm not sure that part of it was successful, but it was amazing to see real actual history with houses that were closing in on 130 years old or older. And just past them was the skyline of the very very contemporary city, itself vastly changed since the eighties (just watch Die Hard again to see how much it's changed.)

Continuing to drop-kick my plans for the day, I drove down to visit a longtime friend at his home in Gardena, which was nice and breezy and cool and everything the Valley hadn't been. Got lunch at the food court of a nearby Japanese market, which was perfect. Back to his place for a while then down the 405 to visit folks in Costa Mesa. Surprise. Spent most of dinner trying to stay awake and said goodbyes then back up the 405. Missed the 110 and figured I'd just drive down Ventura Boulevard and take the pictures I hadn't taken earlier. How bad could it be?

Well, you already know the answer. 405 came to a halt before Santa Monica Boulevard and was like that most of the way through the Sepulveda pass. I should have known. It was Saturday. Something always happens. But I soldiered on and ended up only halfheartedly taking some photos here and there. I was done. Good and. Pushed myself back to the room and decided that I was going to leave town early tomorrow.

So I did.

Spent the drive up trying to process things, or trying to find the seams between those shoals of automobiles heading northbound or both at the same time. I can't say I got any closer to a conclusion for things. What happened happened and it shouldn't have, by any measure of fairness or justice. But that's the ball game. I'd love to have a piquant little philosophical statement that fits into a social media post to get passed around. There isn't one aside acceptance. Kicking and screaming about unfairness is best done into a pillow, and there's no shortage of it to scream about. No end to it.

My birthday's tomorrow. I'm finding it impossible to answer the question as to why I've racked up 21 more than my absent friend whose passing had me back in LA over the week/end. We want there to be an answer that isn't painful or that is reassuring, something to confirm that things make sense. There isn't one. And if there was, would it be acceptable? When you'd trade time or trade health with someone who's gone now, there isn't an answer. Not one that doesn't make me angry or upset. Or resigned.

And his death isn't the only thing, not nearly, that makes these questions demand an answer that cannot be given. The only solution being to keep going. To keep living and working and scratching on the walls of time, diamond hard.

But the human heart is harder still. It must be.

Until next time, folks.