from los angeles

More Santa Ana winds looming. 

Santa Ana winds to blow into region. 

“Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.”  — Joan Didion

- Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Los Angeles Notebook, p.217.

Santa Ana winds from October through March. I am here January through February, and the warmth this weather condition brings to LA is welcome.

When I arrive in Los Angeles for the winter, there is rain. Heavy clouds fill the valley. Now, clear skies mark our migration from the East Coast.

The warm weather. It’s the Santa Ana winds says the driver as I head to DTLA. 

Comparisons to Föhn in Austria. Really, this journey started in Vienna. Without Vienna, there wouldn’t be LA - or there would be a different LA. 

“Los Angeles

Give me a miracle, I just want out from this.”

So often in Los Angeles, you’ll suddenly be hit by the inequality. Stepping over unhoused people as you leave a grocery store that sells fresh juices for $17. You can try and hide from it. Hiking the hills above the city where you are not confronted by the poverty and health disparities, and you can forget. The privilege to forget the pain as the sun shines down as you hike the canyons. You can no longer see the tents and trash hiding under bridges or on the side of highways below, and then you love Los Angeles. 

In Los Angeles, I am entering the final year of my 20s. 

LACMA. Hockney, “adopted home city” - a QR code invites you to discover the song that accompanies the Hockney piece: Joni Mitchell, California. 

“But I wouldn't wanna stay here, it's too old and cold and settled in its ways here”

The day before my birthday, we visit the Canyon Store in Laurel Canyon. Sage at the checkout as I pay for deli sandwiches. A hike in Runyon Canyon. Los Angeles below. The Santa Monica Mountains.

Los Angeles, away from DC and conversations about security clearances and policy. Over Vietnamese coffee in Echo Park, folks speak about acting classes. At co-working spaces, talent and producing. 

Warmth of LA’s sun

Winter Solstice, a month on

Hide here until spring.

A month on from winter solstice in Montauk when the waves of the wild Atlantic were calm. 

Solstice morning sky,

ombre of light in the dark,

calm waves crash below. 

Joan Didion is in New York, too. 

Born in California. Died in New York.

Now, the Pacific. A body of water I am less familiar with than the Atlantic. Even the Atlantic shapes my identity: transatlantic.

Rain in Los Angeles. 

Rainbow in the sky

Coffee house, long black coffee

Watching the city.

I started this haiku with Regenbogen, the German.

I don’t write “formally” since Athens, around summer solstice. Since then, I’ve traveled to India. I’ve visited Israel. Qatar, Canada, and Albania. 

Darkness. 

I am thrown into the darkness of the world’s largest democracy: India. My plane from Paris lands at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport in the early hours of the morning after Thanksgiving weekend. Thanksgiving grounds me as a holiday. I stay home and do not travel. I clear immigration, exchange dollars for rupees, and find a car to take me to the hotel: I arrive in India. In the darkness of night in Delhi, I feel the heavy sky and smog. November, the air quality in northern India, in Delhi, at its poorest.

Light. 

The shades rise to bring in the hazy sunshine of sunrise and morning in India’s capital. In Delhi, I take advantage of rising naturally in the early hours of the morning. Early in my trip, I head to Delhi’s Red Fort and Gate of India to meet the sunrise and before the crowds. Mornings in northern India at this time of year are cool. I wander between the red - burned oranges - of the fort. 

Fort or a fortress? Male or female or neither. The men hold hands as they roam at sunrise among the walls of the former residence of Mughal emperors and royalty. I reflect on gender and sexuality in India and the brutal legacy of colonial law on gender and sexuality across South Asia and beyond imported from European, largely British, rule. 

Colonialism. Neocolonialism. European. American.

In Israel, a frenetic year comes to a close. 2022 started slowly where schools and universities stayed home. We paused again because of pandemic. But, then it became frenetic - a sense of making up for lost time, and I traveled the United States; I traveled the world. Almost always as an American. 

I set the intention, in Israel, that 2023 will be slower. 

In Israel, morning light fills our loft in Yafo to reveal the Hebrew titles of books which line the walls. The sunshine, not alarms, wakes us for these final days of the year. Birds are disturbed when I open the shutters and windows to let the air from the Mediterranean fill the space we’ll hide away in. It feels like spring - after the damp days of London in December. We step out into Yafo, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. 

Between Israel and Los Angeles, there is a brief hibernation in DC. A crisp, cold, and sunny campus before the students return from winter break.

Now, in Los Angeles, I write. 

Soon, in Los Angeles, there is an exhibit at UCLA on Joan Didion’s life through art.