Back in Los Angeles, Renewed

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After a week of meandering through the Midwest, I’m finally back on the west coast. In the midst of its cool and breezy daylight, with bacon grilling on the skillet and a plane engine whirring far out in the clear blue sky, the town has never felt so fresh; Chicago made for some awesome Times, but I love Los Angeles and wouldn’t trade it for any other city in the world.

Now, it’s time to rebuild myself. As if with new eyes, or at least a renewed vision, I’m at a point at which I can look at things back home from the ground up again.

A new school-year has just begun, and with it, a world of transitions start over again. In the same light, this August 19th, JIMBO TIMES will enter into its third year of production:

“And it suddenly dawns on me that in the blink of an eye I might never again see my city the way I get to now. The time is special: particular to sounds, sights, scents, and other essences all of their own. Like everything else, it’s only temporary. For a second, I want to pause every bit of it to stand indefinitely in the moment. I realize that even if it’s not perfect, it’s more than plenty, and that even if it’s a struggle, it’s one I’m fiercely determined to go the distance with. After all, every last inch of L.A.’s concrete has strengthened my feet, every one of its lights has guided my journey, and each of the strangers I’ve encountered along the way have all accompanied me throughout its long road. Together, we are still here: still hungry, but also still humble; day in and night out, each with our own kind of love for this miracle and madness of a home. For me, sometimes it’s not much, but other times, it is everything. Tonight, it is everything.”

Today is also my brother’s first day living in San Jose, California. He’s been back home in L.A. since finishing his first semester at Chico State, but now he’s in a transition again, too. School starts for him next week, but before then, it’s just him and a strange new city. I still remember meeting up with him in the city of Chico like it was just the other day.

In reality, it was some two months ago in the early days of June, at the outset of summertime. Looking back at our time at home in the middle of our twenties, we’ll be able to say we managed to be loyal about it for more than one occasion: hugging mom together, riding out to the park together, enjoying fish tacos and a beer or two together.

Tomorrow, mom is also off to an adventure, leaving for a week to visit our abuelita in Oaxaca. I’m happy for her, but also naturally just slightly worried. Flying can be exhausting, and the little Señorita will definitely need some rest after her flight. Still, I trust she’ll be in good hands. She’s the heart of lions. Of course she’ll be just fine.

As for yours truly, there’s a world to bring to fruition. All the projects I’ve had the pleasure of citing throughout the pages as of late, and even more.

It goes on, and it will continue to drain me, but I’m so grateful for each part of it. I can feel it all flowing right through like water and the wind on my skin. Los Angeles’s water and wind, that is, tremendous in every ounce they get to me.

J.T.

We Meet Again Los Angeles

J.T.2 Comments

Stripped of all your traffic, and wrapped up in the slender calm and silence of the night, your true colors reveal you to be the same old patch of pueblos like the dry lands that used to be frequented only by humble pobladores all those years ago.

In moments like these, it’s clear that despite every effort to get lofty, you’re still not so different from the myriad of country-towns all across the nation, surrounded by an emptiness so vast between arid earth and infinite sky.

Even so, tomorrow when you’re a bright, fancy metropolis again, which has little to no time for the pobladores —or any ole roots for that matter– I’ll still see you.

Together we’ll make two transient beings strutting through the corridors of a time and space we like to think we can bend if we use enough of our imagination.

The people will rise to meet us with another smile under the sunshine then, and of course we’ll return the gleam right back. We’ll be back to business as usual, and will be oh so good at business as usual again.

Everyone will buy it all, or buy enough of it anyway, and it’ll be another laid back day in the city of L.A.,

But when the sun sets on the boulevard, and when all of the smiles of the people dim back into the inevitable stillness of their faces,

When the people retreat back into their shells, to trudge back into their innards,

That’s when all that will be left is the void between us again.

I don’t know exactly how it’ll be, but I do know it’ll probably show us

Once again, how

Even after all we might know about each other,

We’ve still got so much more to learn about each other.

I will see you there, old friend,

And will greet you, as always,

With flailing, helpless arms

J.T.

Crossing the Streets in East Hollywood

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My eyes begin to waver, and my heart seems to nearly stop in its tracks. In a city rushing like this one, it’s even a dangerous act, to stand still in the middle of traffic. If not for rushing engines, a flaming swath of footsteps behind my body threaten to overtake me. Yet in the midst of the crowd, there lies another appointment for me to meet, something beyond what’s written in my calendar.

As I filter through the streets, something divine is at work. On the one hand, I’m just like any of the tiniest specimens that make up the universe, as ephemeral as any other. At the same time, I reflect new worlds within the universe, filled with new possibilities.

Suddenly, going through the day isn’t just about arriving somewhere on time. It’s about being alive in a world that doesn’t always exactly feel like it’s living.

The strangers around me are suddenly not so strange; they’re the closest thing to family outside of my actual family. In the midst of an earthquake or some other catastrophe, they’d be the closest people to push past the apocalypse with.

But before the great inevitable catastrophe–of ruined bones and sunken skin–where would we draw the line between saving others, and saving ourselves?

For myself, feeling for others is as natural as breathing, or as natural as opening my eyes in the morning. Not because it’s as if we’re all made of the same flesh and bone, but because we are all made of the same flesh and bone.

In my heart, I want all of us to live triumphantly, indelibly, indefinitely.

But the truth is that regardless of who might be saved or not: everything has to end. And before then, everything has to fall apart.

This is where it becomes strange. On most days, my little part of Los Angeles feels like the exact opposite of just a moment in time and space. It’s as if the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Observatory have always been there, staring at the stars like they do tonight.

Yet these places have only been a part of my world as long as I’ve known it.

Eventually, through the same process that placed our paths at this certain intersection of time and space, at another intersection, we’ve got to go our separate ways from one another.

Each of us suddenly has to disappear, as if to go back to the untraceable time and space from where we came. Just like all matter in the universe.

I should know this, though. If there’s one thing anyone who lives in L.A. should know, it’s that even a city of stars can’t last forever. All stars are made to shine, and then to burn out and transform.

The death of a star may then seem tragic. But it’s also more than that.

The death of a star is the birth of new worlds; if it wasn’t for the stars that erupted across the skies before ours, we couldn’t be here now, in between clouds, meteors, and the countless other matter making up the galaxy surrounding the little intersection at which I’m standing.

Every street and boulevard, then, every palm tree, all the squirrels burrowing through, and the city-goers who feed them, all of us, whether we’re driving at 95 miles an hour over the freeway, or waiting hours for the bus late into the evening, whether we’re on our way to or with our loved ones, or to rest our bodies after another long day at work — no matter what or where we are — we all have to go, and to keep going.

No matter how much we’d like to resist the movement, the moment has to pass. I’ve got to realize that I’m standing in the middle of traffic, and that no matter how beautiful it might appear, I can’t afford to get lost in its brilliance indefinitely. Not today.

But with this note, I can crystallize the moment for someone other than myself; I can take the radiance I see all around me, and chuck it out into the universe like a satellite in search of other intelligence.

I can also now let the moment pass, to get to that scheduled appointment. I finally submit to the flow, becoming one with the swath of footsteps.

Let’s go Los Angeles.

J.T.