EPISODE 98 – TELL THEM EVERYTHING NOW, WITH NAHSHON DION

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For our 98th installment (originally recorded May 29th, 2022), Nahshon and I discuss yours truly’s roots in Los Angeles, the L.A. mayor’s race, the L.A. County Sheriff’s office, and even Acapulco restaurant. Nahshon Dion is a multi-talented, award-winning creative nonfiction writer, teaching artist, creative director, executive producer, and arts patron from Pasadena, California. She hosts TRANSBRATIONS, a YouTube show, whose next guest, on June 21st, features Writer and Professor Elmaz Abinader, co-founder of Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA).

*It was Toni Morrison–not Angela Davis–in a conversation with Angela Davis, who noted the abundance of libraries in the United States per capita compared to the rest of ‘the West’s’ states and nations.*

*Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties was authored by Mike Davis and Jon Weiner–not Weinstein–in 2020.

J.T.

Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 28

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Spring is in the air, and the earth on this side of the hemisphere is returning to its best form. The reason people live in Los Angeles is for the sunshine, and for the endless array of hidden gems glowing underneath.

For this poblador amid the palm trees, I look forward to the day that I can walk the trails of Eaton Canyon again. I can already hear the crunch of my footsteps falling on the brown, red bedrock. I can remember how far away from home I begin to feel as I trek further into the sequestered trails. I can also remember how at once that I feel far, I also feel perfectly within range of an unmistakeable home. I can neither stray too far away, nor wander too closely when I visit this land; I can only be centered as a true confidant of its rolling terrain.

In many days before the crisis, I treasured every opportunity to find Los Angeles away from Los Angeles. But the fact of the matter is that I could only ever return home from distand lands with a renewed vigor for the smell of carne asada, tortillas, cebolla and cilantro perforating through otherwise still and empty night airs.

I can’t remember the instant or occasion on which I had my first carne asada burrito, but in hindsight, I’m sure it was a moment of true love. It was also a moment when, for all the thinness of a dry, dusty day, food uplifted, set down, and made any dullness from the hour into a magical spell before deliverance, before a token of the earth’s riches; a tip to keep going, carnivore. Moreover, whether consciously or not, it was an acceptance of what wonderful things could still be achieved by a great compromise for the rise of the south-west. A moment of self-love, before those two words could even be conceptualized as being appropriate when placed together.

I look forward to each of these treasures again when the time is right; how beautiful it turns out to be to wait for those things we love the most. But it is also beautiful to remember, in any case.

J.T.

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