The Copper Door

I stood in Pan Pacific Park yesterday, waiting for equipment to be set up and settings to be recorded. From my vantage point, I had seemingly all of Los Angeles in my vision. To the north, I saw the hills, through an almost completely clear sky, the haze reduced to what's left over when a written question doesn't end with a question mark. To the east, there was a flat expanse of trees and low buildings and, far enough away, tall buildings. To the south, there was more of the east but, in the immediate foreground, I saw people playing soccer on dirt. They seemed joyous, if resigned to being kept from the grass. To the west, I saw The Grove.


There's a lot missing from my picture, I know. The complexities are all obvious in their simplicity.

It's not easy to run in soccer shoes. But I didn't have to run too far.

It's easy to get tired when you stay up until close to sunrise for the first time you can remember... well, the first time since the first time you thought driving down the 5 freeway in the middle of the night was the most beautiful thing imaginable. So, I was tired. Steps were taken and untaken. Plans, antics - changed. Then, the next day...

I've been thinking a lot about this place recently. I never wrote much poetry about it. I hardly touched it in my fiction. And my blog entries about the place have been rare. But it's where I grew up and where most of the stories (those meant for children and the other ones) were told.

I think about the restaurants in the town, at least the ones that were there between '75 and '84. I think about the fancy one, down the street from the Burger King where I worked my first job. There, they had garlic butter bowls and separate plates for the shrimp tails. My sister liked salad. My mom liked the bacon. Dad... I don't remember what he would eat at that restaurant but I know he liked the steak.

There was the pizza place where it would just be the three of us - me, sister, and mom - when the patriarch worked late and the sun set early and we were hungry. They served greasy pizza there. And they made a good version of the regional delicacy - the Philly cheese steak. We always sat in booths, me alone on one side. I don't even know if they had tables. I don't remember the name of the place.

I went to the pizza place one other time, with my friend Jim (he's a Republican now) and our non-friend Tim. We were all back from college on our Thanksgiving break in our freshman year. I wasn't really "back" because my school was just down Route 611, close to the city. It was the last time I saw Tim. I still see Jim every 6 years or so. I know I've mentioned him before.

"What's left over when a written question doesn't end with a question mark." Hmm.

I think about my hometown a lot these days because when there's a story to tell and you know the middle and ending (so far), it's good to figure out the beginning. Because, it's been told to me, you need to grab the audience's attention right away. The, you could map it all out and you begin to understand. Or, it's just another way of figuring out the family story.

My aunt (the one who's not speaking to my her son (my cousin) or her sister-in-law (my mother)) would send her two sons (one of whom she's not speaking to) to Doylestown every summer, sometimes for the entire summer. I have vivid memories of drives to and from airports to pick up and drop off the cousins. It's why I dream of airports these days. A lot. I dream of space-age airports, hovering in the sky...groundless, lifeless black sky around them. The opposite of beautiful Pan Pacific Park. I dream I'm always going some place, never staying anywhere. Sure, I was never going anywhere on those airport drives with the cousins. But it would only be a matter of time.