A Note on Living With Myself in Los Angeles

J.T.Leave a comment
Mom's in Los Angeles; Winter 2018
Mom’s in Los Angeles; Winter 2018

Tonight I lie back in the living room after a homemade steak, which was followed by some sweet plantains and a warm bowl of arroz con leche. It’s almost like I treated myself out to dinner, but at home.

Maybe a whole person’s life is about learning to live with themselves. In my twenties, I’m learning to see the world as a place to grow my skills for challenges that are also growing with my age.

The world is aging, too, after all. And while idling by to observe it is its own pleasure, I’m now diving into the world again to see just how much more I can uncover.

This isn’t always graceful. In fact, the path to one’s better self is filled with forgotten truisms and hasty correction after one’s mistakes. Sometimes at the end of the day, the only grace to be claimed is the finality of it all, no matter what the outcome.

In a city like L.A., few things make this as clear as the sight of a car on the road whose driver is obviously in a panic, dashing from one lane to the next in a desperate effort to get ahead, until finally they cut through a slit that’s just barely tolerable as an opening, though not without nearly losing the life they want to get to and placing another’s in danger.

But the world is rushing by and we need to get to it, don’t we? Isn’t that what we mean by ceasing the day? Plus, in the current environment of things, just what is patience? As in, how much is legally required?

But of course we can only rush so much before crashing into one another.

When a great trial through the world is all said and done, the only parts which we remember are the ones we choose to etch into memory.

Tonight I choose to remember my first homemade steak after another whirlwind of a week. It wasn’t bad at all, and yet I’m only just getting started with my dinner game.

I also choose to remember any other driver out there whose life was ever endangered in the making of these Times. We are still in this together, and I’ve got much to learn from you all.

J.T.

Finding My Way Back Without the Lights

J.T.1 Comment

Since as long as I can remember I was driven by a tremendous love for the world, which was also a great hurting for the world, in that it hurt to love something so much.

‘Being driven’ implies some form of control over this love, though, except that I wasn’t always in control. In fact, it might be that I was in control of the world around me less than half the time. During the other half, it felt like I was only reacting to an unexpected wind, as if one day the world suddenly opened its arms to me and I had to react. I had to express myself. I had to write.

Except that even if I wrote, it still didn’t mean I knew how to appreciate everything I loved about the world all at once, or even just at the “right time.” I mustered what I could with the scraps of time I was given, dropping the world again and again on its head, making mistakes, and moving on. Now, with more distance between myself and all I’ve loved over the years, even if I wanted to claim to have no regrets, that would preclude that I know the whole of myself; the fact of the matter is that I’m actually still getting to know the different moments which add up to myself. As for what the final version of myself regrets, I’m still finding out.

How does a person imagine their whole life to make up their mind about how they feel about it, anyway? As in, where do they find the time for such a thing? In any case, I realize that this time around in reflecting on things, I can see I’m now somewhere along a middle space.

I can also see that I’m supposed to cross this passage onto the next span of my travail through the Cosmos, but that instead of lights guiding my path, it’s actually a rather dark terminal I’m standing in.

A part of me wanted to come back from all of my travels this year stronger, but another part of me was highly aware of how I could actually only come back from them in a more vulnerable state than before, estranged from my surroundings as I tried to make sense of just what mattered the most in both the places I left and the ones I returned to.

I’m now rummaging through that vulnerable state, because everything to be found in it is a collector’s item. And I’ve come to believe that I’m supposed to get to know my vulnerabilities better in order to prize my strengths better too.

Maybe that’s why I’ve decided to step away from so much of the driving force as of late; while the last time I checked I wanted to immerse myself full throttle with the world to uncover its farthest dimensions, it’s now the polar opposite; I am like the night, swollen into a dark and spacious state, unloving and even cold. It creates a balance in me somehow.

I know this when I open my eyes through the darkness to find the other part of myself; rather than being afraid of its difference, I am immovably at peace with it, accepting it for as long as it needs to be with me.

I don’t always need light to observe my existence; even through darkness, I can sort through its contents to still find enough of what I need from myself; I understand that just as I thrive with light, I’m meant to thrive without it as well. The result is something I’m rather happy to lay bare.

With more soon,

J.T.