After living almost a year in Los Angeles, I have a whole new perspective of staying alive. Los Angeles actually means "the city of angels" in spanish. Whoever came up with that name must be very disappointed with the state it lands itself into today.
I plucked up courage to take the subway in downtown on a Sunday evening. Boy, I thought I was in the land of the undead as I walked through the grimy stinky streets of downtown. I didn't choose to take this route, but I had to bring dinner to my hungry hubby and his colleagues 4 streets away from my office. I had to walk one block to get to the subway. Downtown at night on weekends is scary, scattered with the homeless. Penniless, starved and some even psychotic, it is dangerous to even look at them. According to the locals, they approach people who look lost or directionless. So I could only walk briskly and focused.
When I reached the subway, I didn't feel safe still. There were only a few souls around the ticketing booths, which is a level above the platform. At that moment, I suddenly thought of the movie "Crash". There was a statement that left an impact on me, something to the effect of "it's only when people crash into one another do we realise the existence of ourselves". It is true. Growing up in a densely populated city of Singapore, with 4 million people in a 24 miles by 11 miles island, I realise that as much as I hate the rush hours on the train, jostling with people at close proximity on the bus, hundreds of pedestrians at the orchard rd crossing, I actually miss the crowds. I miss observing people falling asleep onto their neighbour's shoulders, the busy street of Bugis Junction, queuing up for a $3 meal at hawker center. Your existence is highly defined by the level of interaction with others. The word
collision has a different meaning to me nowadays. Of course, colliding into someone else's car is still not a pleasant thing, as my husband and I have experienced recently. LA has too many cars, that's why the air is so polluted. But that is also why the sunset here is so pretty. The dust in the air actually paints the sky a purple tinge.
The whole LA is a stage set. That's what my hubby said, which I think is true. Downtown especially, because of its grimy and stained condition, makes a good textured backdrop for filming. I just witnessed a stage set right where my hubby worked yesterday. One of the street was completely filled with waste paper on the road. Ashes all over, and interestingly, the homeless(I don't think they are actors) standing around looked like they were part of the show. Hollywood, it made LA look so glamorous on-screen. Media is a big fat liar.
Photo taken by James Lo & Keri Kaba, 2005
