yes, of course i miss you.
here's a journal entry i wrote when i first moved to l.a.
i arrived in los angeles in late july, off the train
in burbank of all places, and got stuck in north hollywood at some cheap boarding "hostel"for two days. the bunks were full of girls going for some sort of interview or audition. they had a 6 month limit on staying in the little dark flat full of matresses, the two i talked to had just begged off another month.
after traveling for weeks, i was breathing that vortex of downtown even though my friend k. was doubtful and full of nightmarish memories of skid row.
i finally made it and walked just looking, feeling like a squinting cherub. i got a room in a cheap hotel that week and just stayed. 3 months later i still feel like a child, a simpleton wide-eyed unsuprised by the idiosyncracies of new beginnings, but taking it all in and repeating in accented verbatim the snatches of conversation directed down to me.
walking down 5th st. on acid for the first time since my teens, grinning at lewd commentary dulce, i encountered the limbless and their mauveish stumps enthralled me echoing the mutations of quick public space architectural plans. Such monstrous entities on skid row, even after the lapd had to clean it up.
s. asked me sideways if i was going to turn into a shark in this place where unadulterated spectacle strews it's sequins over all the flesh-nibbling staph of the filthy golden-grey streets. well, he didn't say all that... i just can't see how my swallowingwhale of a self could morph and grow razor teeth when enrapture bubbles at the passing of MacArthur Park twice daily as the regular corner bum shouts hello little lady gleefully wall-eyed recognizing me on the clownish centaurian.
i don't want anything from these people, i just want to look at them...which for now makes me the perfect cult reluctant transplant. or maybe i just haven't found the right idol.
i haven't been painting the molarish shapes that
came so naturally for 3 years, and now my hand speaks in pink piles of people choking on wings swooping frozen in the yellow shock of midday los angeles. the wrapping legs in the with tiny scars mattedry paintings and the need to rub myself raw (a little city lonely) conversate through my aching back, sighing with the bent angle of stooping to paint.
when people see them, cartoon angel orgies, all roasted in the cadimum yellow, they laugh. i like to make people laugh, and occasionally i'm good at it.
in the beginning i was painting the stuffed tiger rug that i bought to house-warm my room. in the last completed painting he wraps through the figures holding each other, curling elbow joints around fleshy thighs and fixed as statues. everything is so static, trapped in dummy psychedelic skins and silly effort. they labor and expand in the heat, unfurling the stiff feathered colloguys of non-native speakers; but people like them--they are "likeable" in the way that they are unself-consciously cute and fucking and sucking each other. i guess what i'm saying is that these paintings are getting all the puppy love that i feel incapable of lavishing on a lover right now, they are my separate humanity, the disassociative climax of a faux recluse.
i love los angeles.
they can't build tall buildings here because of imminent earthquakes and the streets are crawling with set blockades. i live in the urban set of blockbuster alleyways, and it's so much more compact than they let on.
everyone knows that the great american popularity stalks these streets, they wait for the inevitable stroke of fame to touch their eternally sunny days.
some people wear tiny fedoras that are found in all the little corner shops, full of fake leather belts and baseball caps, and big belt buckles with something like a marijuana leaf for the buckle, or an american flag, or the word bitch in a rectangle.
there's a pirate bum (he sells cheap pictures of himself in a three pointed captains hat that looks like it came from long john silver's) that lives in my neighborhood, a real chill vagabond, not pushy, funny guy. the picture that m bought for me is him sitting on the pavement with a look on his face that looks hilariously similar to my childhood stepfather, g. i like this picture very much, the angle, his face with pirate hat tipped above, and the riche aqua wall.
i believe that intended image is more transparent here, everyone seems to have an inherent acceptance of the costuming, deification, and chameleon posturing that comes with living cheek to cheek with american entertainment royalty.
It's fun to see movie stars, they don't look like normal people
(well, i haven't seen many in actuality. i think they don't come downtown much).
and besides,
costumes are cheap and plentiful.
