I live a schizophrenic existence: part of my time spent in a little Texas town; the other right in the heart of LA. Wow. What a contrast.
We just returned from a month in Texas, a wonderful month of hard work and obvious results, neighborly chats on front porches at night, and friends to visit at our home or theirs for many of those nights we were there. A time shift back to the middle of last century – Lord that sounds like a LONG time ago – when people sat and laughed and talked outside from dusk to late in the night.
This was the longest time we’ve been away from LA in the almost 20 years we’ve lived here. Two weeks, I believe, is the next closest time, but certainly never a whole month. Driving back into town was a bit of an eye-opener after so much time away. Traffic, traffic, traffic everywhere and horns honking literally 1/10 of a second after the traffic lights changed. That and people everywhere, walking, in cars, in restaurants with filled-to-the-brim outside seating on patios, and near the clubs, people pouring almost into the street. Wow. This was nothing like the silence and solitude of our part of town in Texas at night. Only the occasional car; the only people those two neighbors out on their porch. Instead, the moon rose in a wide-open sky and the only sound was the song of a single night-bird, a mockingbird, I think.
And yet, we just returned from a walk through the neighborhood near our home here, and people were on their balconies grilling, or out walking their dogs, or inside with curtains open, revealing the ubiquity of television at this point. And though our neighbors across the street live in a 14-story condo building, they are not so different from the ones on North Crockett in Texas. They smile and wave as we come out of our house, and we smile and wave back. And despite the seemingly massive difference between there and here or here and there, our lives are not significantly different. Either place we still are surrounded with friends we love, in a place we love. How lucky is that?
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