“Welcome to Hollywood! What’s your dream?” the character Happy Man says in the opening scene of Pretty Woman, a movie that epitomizes mythic Los Angeles, a place where fairy tales come true. The Dark Goddess Los Angeles, with Her lure of wealth and transformation, Her persona of glamour and aspiration, where even a down-and-out sex worker can be saved by a lawyer with a fear of heights and “save him right back.” Los Angeles calls out a westward invocation of promise. But as much as She pledges, She deceives. Her thick air, dense with unseen harmful toxins, a costly nutrient. Her sinewy highways, the blood lines of her body, sites of daily catastrophe. Our pilgrimage is the slow crawl of passing car crashes on the opposite side of the freeway divider wall. Our mantra, That could have been me. That could have been me.
I’ve been hating LA for thirty-five years. Hating Her May Grey and Her June Gloom. Hating Her maze-like web of concrete highways, Her center-less-ness. Only in Los Angeles are the freeways archetypes, “Take The 2 to The 5 to The 110 to The 10.” I’ve never felt lonelier – alone in my apartment, alone in my car, alone in my thoughts. But over time, I’ve learned to love traversing Los Angeles’ arteries. I have had some of my most profound ideas, my most aha moments, while flowing through Her pulsing veins. The neither here-no-thereness of this city is pregnant with patient possibility. Anything can happen in Her spaciousness, Her waiting.
Continue reading “The Dark Goddess Los Angeles by Arianne MacBean”
I love living in a second-story apartment. Having a view of Los Angeles, of the palm trees, the expansive sky, the distant mountains, and the city lights of downtown, makes life feel bigger, more full of possibilities. In the struggle of transitioning my life back to L.A., the view from my second floor apartment helps make me feel ok in the world. I’m in love with Los Angeles – the land, its topography, its sky, its desertness – and even its traffic. Beside the fact of sometimes being made to arrive late somewhere, I don’t mind being in our famed L.A. gridlocks – I don’t mind being in the slow moving flow of cars. I kind of enjoy being among the thousands of other folks sharing the collective experience of trying to get someplace. Traffic becomes for me a leisurely time when I get to do nothing else but enjoy the city.
Feminism and Religion 