This city. She's more than what's plastered on the big screen and magazines. She has a heartbeat, the heartbeat of a teenage girl with too much on her mind. She is not what she appears to be. When it's dark and the artificial light it not cast upon her, you can see the imperfections they try so desperately to hide. From the outside, she looks like she has her shit together, but trust me, things are not always as they appear. I guess her and I have a lot in common. When it's dark, and her cracks and bumps are visible to the naked eye, she is most beautiful.
The hundreds of lights covering her make her glow like no other. I've always liked these lights, maybe because they makes me feel as though there is someone always there. That's a feeling I haven't always had the luxury of experiencing. Since a young age, I've dreamed of one day living in this beautiful city.
Oh no, I am not talking meet-my-favorite-band-member- or visit-a-foreign-country kind of dream. This dream is so real it drowns them in reality. See, this is the dream that kept me going, or keeps me going rather, when times are tough. The thought of looking out into the city and seeing the same lights that I saw as a child is something that brings me immense joy.
See, I have never been a huge fan of my community. I've never fully liked the people, or the atmosphere, or the lack of lights. I mean, it isn't all that bad, it just isn't real. If you couldn't already tell, I'm a big fan of reality. See, the suburbs have never offered me much. I've always been a city girl at heart. I feel numb when I drive into the mountains where there are no city lights for what feels like miles.
People in the city tell life like it is; they don't paint it with sugar and say everything is golden, because let's face it, it isn't. At least not for everyone. At least not for me. But anyway, the people in the city will admit that life can be quite fucked up sometimes, but you just gonna keep going. And I like that. I don't want to sugarcoat the bullshit that is life and act like everything is okay; but rather confront the fact that everything isn't perfect but it's okay, one day it'll be close to it. See there are two parts as to why I chose the city I did to be my dream, and they are completely unrelated, but rely on each other completely.
Let's recap, shall we? For one, the city is beautifully flawed. The whole personality of her is extremely attractive to me. Second, she is the complete opposite of what I was raised in, which is the complete opposite of me. She's kind of like a school girl crush that I've had my entire life. I cannot count the times my mother and I took the long way home, listening to punk rock and being in a good mood. Those were the moments that made me feel like everything was okay.
I distinctly remember one song, "Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger, that was the song for me. It always made me think of my city, and I could just picture myself sitting in a little apartment on a rainy day and just realizing that i did it; this was something that made me cry every time I thought of it. To this day, walking down the street at midnight with my mother after leaving the Hollywood Forever Cemetery still makes my heart flutter.
To this day, driving through Hollywood with my mother, passing all of the old clubs she snuck into for all the good music, while listening to good music, and looking at the lights; all that makes me feel good. It lets me know that the city, an old friend, is always there to welcome me into the warmth of her arms whenever I need it. Fuck, I really love this city.
c.d.
