Bread and Bread

In the end, I went with Obama. Whereas Hillary is a bit of a moderate who’s rabidly despised by Republicans, Obama seems like a progressive who’s managed to convince people he’s Mr. Nonpartisan. Also, he’s worldly in the most literal sense, which I think we need right now. But even as I inked my ballot, I wanted to give Hillary a hug. My polling place —an Eagles lodge in Eagle Rock (how American is that?)—was pleasantly busy, making me realize how not busy the polling places in my two previous neighborhoods ( West Adams and Mid-City) usually were. I could observe that both those areas were poorer and more heavily African American, whereas Eagle Rock is pretty mixed and middle class, and I could speculate that the lines were probably really long in Santa Monica . But this election is all about optimism, right? So let’s assume that voter tu rn out is high all around the city today, that my previous polling places—a Baptist church and a Presbyterian church—are packed right now wi...

“Carlos and Desiree dropped off a bunch of cardboard boxes outside my door,” I told AK. “They are so nice!” “They’re like your new best friends,” she observed. “You’ve mentioned them like 20 times.” Who are Carlos and Desiree, you ask? They’re my new neighbors at my soon-to-be old apartment building. They’re a young couple with two cute little boys. We’ve talked twice now, and they’ve been friendly. But to be perfectly honest, there’s nothing inherently that special about them. As AK and Alberto prepare to vacate their current house, there’s been lots of wistful reminiscing about the good times they’ve had together. Alberto and his girlfriend Veronica nuzzle AK’s cat endlessly, and though Ferdinand is not a nuzzler by nature, even he seems emotional. Meanwhile, after two years of happily living alone, I’m suddenly sad that I live alone. No one really cares if I get all nostalgic about the time I painted the walls bright blue. I’ve never made an effort to get to ...

For all my talk of lovely fall weather, not-so-lovely fall traffic is kicking my ass. Well, technically it’s expanding my ass, because my ass spends way too much time planted in the bucket seat of a Honda Civic. Good thing I just joined a gym. (After quitting the disastrously managed Bally’s in a huff, I talked to my poor 24 Hour Fitness rep like a been-bu rn ed-before lover still obsessed with her ex: “How often to you guys update your class schedules online? Because certain other gyms never update them, and when you go to take a class, it’s not happening and the staff acts like the mistake is a weird fluke that has never occurred before.”) Anyway, two hours of traffic hell on Wednesday mo rn ing unleashed an evil spirit I’d been carrying around inside of me. I left AK a frantic phone message and then, when I got to the office and still couldn’t cool down, emailed her twice just to describe my misery, including the strangling-alien scream I let out around Washington and Nat...

Driving to the Metro station to pick up AK on Tuesday night, I realized that I live on a hill. It doesn’t seem like a hill because most of the streets immediately surrounding mine are pretty flat, except for a steep drop to the west. So maybe I live on a mesa. Anyway, I had this realization because, driving north, I had the most spectacular view of the mountains, which were suddenly much more noticeable because they were on fire. I knew this. I’d heard about the Griffith Park fire (a much bigger one than the little flare-up that temporarily threatened my birthday party in late March) on the radio earlier in the day. But here it was in front of me, not just smoke—though there was plenty—but huge horizontal walls of bright orange flames. Bigger than a house or ten houses or anything else that might catch my eye on a hillside. And, as the sun set, it was apocalyptically beautiful. Is it wrong to find the apocalypse beautiful? Maybe “sublime”—the way Kant (I think) defined it—...

This morning I jogged up West Boulevard instead of up Vineyard and—this is the miracle of Los Angeles, and of jogging—a whole world opened up to me. From the small bridge over Venice Boulevard, I could see into the rundown-but-elegant gated community on my right and the gravel pit that was once a closed-down hardware store on my left. It was a clear, sunny morning, warm but with a bite, the light golden and almost dangerous-feeling, the way I’ve heard it is not in other parts of the country. When I turned onto Pico, I passed the Pico/Rimpau Transit Center, also known as the bus station. I admit I hadn’t been there on foot since my keys got locked in B’s car at the carwash two years ago and I unexpectedly found myself taking the bus home. But I’ve noticed public transportation is enjoying a renaissance (or maybe just a naissance) in LA, and Pico/Rimpau testified to this. Last I checked, the bus junction was dingy and haunted-looking, the way you want bus stations to be in movies, but no...