Los Angeles

I'm not long back from my first trip to L.A. A disquieting place , I would think, for anyone who has read either of the great communist works - the New Testament or the Marx-Engels Reader.

It's the garish pairing of the most beautiful land in the world awash with the ugliest things man can do to it. Commerce and poverty smack up against each other. Completely separate worlds not inches apart. 

Women walking $5,000 immaculately bred house dogs past literally hundreds of homeless, surrounded by their belongings and sleeping in the ocean-front park. The successful meandering in and out of expensive shops past an old woman begging on her knees for change. They seem not to see each other. To be acting out some elaborate play on the theme of desensitizing. 

For the seeming banality of it, surely there must be tension there. And, for all the fun I had there, I couldn’t help but be afraid of it – of my powerlessness to affect these hopeless lives. And, of coming not to notice them.

Comments

[Douglas Nerad]

LA? Oh, whoops... I thought you were talking about Washington, DC.

[Jetpacks]

Very well written - especially for an AE

[Alphabet Soup]

Great description of LA, your second sentence is especially nice.