Ashni (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ashnistrike) wrote,@ 2007-11-16 02:35:00 |
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California from Above
My god. I forgot about LA. It's been years since I've flown in during the day.
I slept for most of the plane ride, probably because I'd only slept for about 3 hours before getting on the plane. I woke up, looked out the window, and wasn't entirely sure I was on the right planet. Desert spread in brown folds to the horizon--not a single spot of green, and only a line of road, like a Martian canal, to suggest that tool-using sapients might once have existed there.
The desert ends with a hint of green and a few squares of cultivated land. Then the mountains, great folds raised high and worn sharp and deep. Pine trees and terraces, the occasional aberrant lake, and then the land drops and between the mountains and sea is a city where no city should be. Los Angeles spreads across the plain and through every crevace. When the oil grows short, or the water does, it will disappear into the desert--and still it's beautiful, in the way of things that can't last and may not have been entirely a good idea, but have the necessity and awe-fullness of good art.
Just as I'm thinking that, of course, we drop a little lower and some of the sea-mist resolves into the brown cloud of smog that borders the city from above. Still awesome, still beautiful, still ugly. I can deal with LA from the ground, but from the air the contradictions are hard to resolve.
On a separate note, my fellow Kage Baker fans will appreciate my self-restraint. Catalina Island is just off the coast of Long Beach, within view of the conference center: Avalon rising through the ocean mist. I am not going out there because the ferry does full-day trips only, and I can't miss a whole day of Psychonomics. Nameseeker points out to me that most of the things I'd be looking for would be bad ideas to find anyway. It's still hard to resist. I'm not going up to Hearst Castle, either, for much the same reason and with much the same regret.
My god. I forgot about LA. It's been years since I've flown in during the day.
I slept for most of the plane ride, probably because I'd only slept for about 3 hours before getting on the plane. I woke up, looked out the window, and wasn't entirely sure I was on the right planet. Desert spread in brown folds to the horizon--not a single spot of green, and only a line of road, like a Martian canal, to suggest that tool-using sapients might once have existed there.
The desert ends with a hint of green and a few squares of cultivated land. Then the mountains, great folds raised high and worn sharp and deep. Pine trees and terraces, the occasional aberrant lake, and then the land drops and between the mountains and sea is a city where no city should be. Los Angeles spreads across the plain and through every crevace. When the oil grows short, or the water does, it will disappear into the desert--and still it's beautiful, in the way of things that can't last and may not have been entirely a good idea, but have the necessity and awe-fullness of good art.
Just as I'm thinking that, of course, we drop a little lower and some of the sea-mist resolves into the brown cloud of smog that borders the city from above. Still awesome, still beautiful, still ugly. I can deal with LA from the ground, but from the air the contradictions are hard to resolve.
On a separate note, my fellow Kage Baker fans will appreciate my self-restraint. Catalina Island is just off the coast of Long Beach, within view of the conference center: Avalon rising through the ocean mist. I am not going out there because the ferry does full-day trips only, and I can't miss a whole day of Psychonomics. Nameseeker points out to me that most of the things I'd be looking for would be bad ideas to find anyway. It's still hard to resist. I'm not going up to Hearst Castle, either, for much the same reason and with much the same regret.
