Re-patterning my steps in Los Angeles

The sunset, Malibu Beach
March 13, 2015

Los Angeles is screaming at me. Corners and secret pockets in the city are calling for attention. "REMEMBER ME! REMEMBER ME! YOU WALKED ON ME WHEN YOU WERE SEVEN AND YOU DID THIS!"

I am sitting in my little car, driving around town, when suddenly the world stops, and I get pushed-thrown into this memory that is also accompanied with various emotions. Especially when driving through downtown L.A., past the Don Felix Peruvian restaurant and the old KFC plaza my dad helped build in the early nineties. I remember the walls, the colors, the smells, the people, but most of all I remember my vivid childhood imagination, delivering food on foot to my father's work site, and seeing my cousin Renato ride his bike in the basement parking lot. How big the world seemed, and how I forgot about the bigness of the world when holding hands with my parents or my little sister.

Lately I've been taking to driving around Los Angeles. I am working from home, trying to acclimate back into the rhythm of Los Angeles, and my potential role here as a citizen of a city that used to be my playground. I've been doing long full day drives around South Pasadena, Northridge, San Fernando and San Gabriel Valley, Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Glendale. There are more places to drive through and learn about, and more places to re-discover.

It's been a slow process, this -- reconnecting with Los Angeles. The experience has come with it's challenges. In the end, it's the people I love that keep it all together for me. Home is being glued and cemented into a feeling of belonging, something that no other place holds. The feeling of dreams, heart aches, and reconfiguring my sense of self -- and brining it all together. I'm going to make this place a home, once more.

Slowly but surely, I know my partner and I will find our place, again.