I noticed the smoke passing Hill Street at 6th, a smoldering column originating not too far from there. You could’ve traced an L on the downtown grid, from me to the fire... if for some reason you’d been following me via digital map... if I’d ever once sent you my location, for some reason.
I forget that anyone at given point time could simply locate me and then just come to my side. Truly, anybody, a complete stranger, or a partial onlooker across the street who decides to broach the crosswalk when the light turns and lock pace with my stride.
A friend of mine used to say that it’s these kind of fringe, paranoid thoughts that make us small.
But what about the evidence comprised of my name as a blinking dot on my friend’s mobile screen? That delay in transmission: one second I’m blinking here, then I hover a moment over there? Please find me friend.
By 7th, en route to Olive, I still smelled nothing of it, the smoke. I searched for it in the air, but all the turned up was a distant waft of macarons and grenadine from the bakery up the block. I lingered on the scent, forcing up memories of dinner mints and daisy-chained crowns of false jasmine resting on my sister’s brow. Isn’t that the crush of love. The smoke doubled in height and density as I falsfied other tender moments with my family in my minds eye.
Other stench evaporated off putz in the gutter while Anthony Kiedis said he’d get me into penetration. You can’t deny it. It’s so true. In time I do want to be his best friend. He’s my celebrity donnée and to love Los Angeles is to fall out of love with it. I know because I do it now.
There was that fancy establishment with glass windows scaling floor to ceiling across the way. French name. A couple inside debated the tenents of a man who’d hire a hit on the trees of his neighbor’s property, “all just for a skyline view?” “New York, baby.”
What about sirens? I don’t recall any LAFD local engines hauling in the direction of the fire, but it is my assumption that there can only be smoke with fire.
A coffee mate cup crunched under my step. I debated seeking the fire out, admiring it’s engrossing column floating westward and overhead. A degenerate to my left, my reflection to my right. I thought to search the news of the burn for posterity.
And yet nothing’s turned up since arriving home. LAPD in their favorite toy whip up the ozone loudly and forever it seems. Ozone already intercepted by the telephone lines, isn’t this what the abducted believe. Someone I’m acquainted with but can’t really place in time told me this a year in front my apartment building. Their words are passionate, like what they needed to impart was infact important, and I recall believing just that.
I wafted perfume over the weekend, designed by the mysterious and prolific local perfumer. I can’t wait for the scent fair at the craft museum across from the tar pints.
The scent in questions imitates the experience of alien abduction, supposedly. I quiet liked it, they say it’s disturbing for many. It set the scene of a prefabed shipping container turned contractor’s office at the port, or squarely in the middle of the mojave by the boys with the big guns with the surgical utensils. Or, the boys who make the big guns, of course, of course. Yada yada yada.
A metal vessel. Not unlike what the displaced sleep in near the Yoshinoya on Alameda at the edges of downtown. A dismantled RV. Parked at that intersection, where if you don’t pull forward an inappropriate amount, you’d be mangled, maimed, or some other word that’s magnitudes beyond what I can only physically comprehend as “crushed.” I worry about whoever jaywalks across the street. Anyone pacing at the curb. Stalling in the left lane right when the lights switch. Where are you now?
Cady corner, developers installed portable trailers into the asphalt. Faux wood blinds never not drawn. There’s never any shade at high noon around here. Here or there. I can’t think of a single tree. These buildings bury their eyes. The construction in those southern blocks progress at curious paces, at moments in time, many of which do not seem to belong to this earth. Coming together all at once, snuffing whatever was there before it and gifting it to the wind.