An e-folio of my concretions, and related writing is contained within these pages. This will include related events occurring from a time before moving South from North California.
Within these writings cement acts as a seed crystal of thoughts during the relocation of a foreigner into the ultra suburban landscape.
In some ways, I'm not actually in LA, at the same time I am, depending on who you ask. ‘...moving to the South Lands’, and ‘Living in LA’, was at one point for me synonymous, as it is for many who call the North home. If this sounds silly, try drawing a map of southern California from memory. What we know and don’t know is complicated, and the truth is that there is a lot more to know than what there isn’t, to truly know, and even that is like a shifting cloud. For many LA is everything between ‘Mexico’ and the physical boundary line of the San Gabriel Mountains. This gigantic range stands as the gateway to the Southern Landscape, and LA was this landscape, because everything else fades in its shining light. Despite a new technical awareness, it is not clearly something else. And it makes sense in many ways, LA is almost as much an idea as it is a place. An idea that can exist now in every corner of the earth, supposing the Wi-Fi is strong enough.
It’s can be hard to know when one’s in LA or not without a big sign explaining things, maybe you can just feel it. For example, a friend and I determined that your not actually living in Hollywood unless you can see the sign from your dwelling/street, this feels real, somehow better than using the map on your phone. In this new place one suburban town flows into the next blurring distinctions. Even the far outer edge it hard to define, but I've come up with a metric for this. If at any point you stumble upon a wandering tortoise, you have officially reached the edge of LA.
Despite all this I’m still just right over there, technically speaking, right where I need to be, and like so many, drifting in the banks of the information stream, sifting through the alluvial wash; carefully panning for ‘gold’ particles among the black heavy sands that collect on the inside bend of the virtual flow. Usually only a colorful rock or a nice polished stick is found, but the sluice box is always open, waiting for the right piece of salted jargon to tumble through and stick, glomming on for good, in the meantime I’ll be writing, fixing things, and all the while using the ubiquitous cementum glue stuff that surrounds us.
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