Item: 1 stack of mail

It first occurred to me that I might love LA on January 1st of this year. Convenient, wasn't it. It helped that it was New Year's Day, and that I was practically flying west down Santa Monica Boulevard, which was empty (!!) on a Sunday morning. This will never happen again, but at that point it ceased to matter. The place is ugly, the lifestyle is unbearable and I know it, but once my defenses were down enough to have this moment, it was all over.

I react to this feeling in various ways: by panicking, by making plans to leave, by thinking that I must be mistaken and trying to reason it away. Rationally, I acknowledge that LA is a dump, a greedy gross mass of humanity that has despoiled the earth and churns out loads of entertainment trash every day, and yet knowing this only makes me feel more tender-hearted about it. There is something here in this city that's lovable, that hurts in certain times and places because almost no one sees it.

I'm thinking about being a local because I'm getting ready to leave again, even though it's just for a short time. Some things can't really be reasoned with.