honest review of walking to the coffee shop without music 2/16

my footsteps are louder than i thought. they clunk clunk down the back way, and though i’ve already planned to do this, walk to the coffee shop without music, as i open the back door my right hand reaches reflexively for my headphones. already. i have to consciously pull it back. i step out from the narrow close-quarters hallway into the sun. it’s wrapped in cloud and smog and i don’t know where the smog ends and the clouds begin. in the alley, all i can hear is the sound of gravel grinding against the sole of a shoe in motion. at the first opportunity to cut through a complex to the street, i turn left, then right, and i’m still not yet in Los Angeles… the sounds of my feet are still the loudest sounds… and i pass a woman with a face that looks like it has spent many many years in the sun. we offer each other tired smiles and continue on. the crows outside the fire station are pecking at a clear plastic bag – picking it up, dropping it, bouncing around to get it from another angle, picking it up, dropping it. as i approach they drop it and hop into the street, i think of my father hurling a ball in from centerfield to the plate, and turn to watch the crow as i walk away. he turns to watch me too, and i pause, look into his tiny black eyes and invite him, telepathically, to hop onto my shoulder. he doesn’t. monotasking. is it monotasking to walk to the coffee shop without music if you’re also stopping to telepathically invite birds to climb onto your shoulder? am i monotasking or just doing less than before?  i don’t think too much about it, because that would be the opposite of doing less. and so i walk east toward the coffee shop, past some woman applying duct tape to the wall of her front porch, past a woman with a husky who kicks grass off the berm and onto the sidewalk. at the next block i inhale big to see if i can smell the grass but get a nose full of rubber instead. approaching the light, i’m passing another woman with a dog, and she’s waiting for it to finish pissing under a bush, watching it, and as i get near she looks up at me and smiles uncomfortably. i am never uncomfortable smiling, it’s always big and always folds my whole face and i question why it is people in the suburbs are so comfortable with each other. why they can look you in the eye and say “good morning!” while people here in the city, who are far more used to seeing far more people, seem so much less comfortable with the idea of addressing strangers. maybe that’s it – in the suburbs you have neighbors and in the city you have strangers. when most of the interactions here are one-off, why bother greeting someone you’ll never know? as i cross the crosswalk, there’s a pickup truck half in it, halfway across the street, and as i pass it just inches from the bumper, its driver hits the gas and i look over my shoulder to see myself launch into the intersection. the tires roll over my torso with a force that flings my long brown hair into my face, and i lie there, face covered, body covered in tire marks, the truck screeching down Venice Blvd. now i am in Los Angeles. at the next intersection, a bus stops and picks people up. the driver looks at me and i wave him on. this is a long light, the longest light in the area, right across from Sony Studios, and the street here is 6 lanes which makes it one of the city’s main arteries. a valley of concrete, and i look out over it, waiting for the light to change – the fake rainbow in the studio lot peeking from above the palm trees so perfectly manicured around the lot walls – not like the palm trees lining the street i died on – and the bus stop empty, and the sidewalks barren of all but floating trash, and the massive One Culver facing down the meek sun with its arsenal of tinted windows, a sun that through the smog is not even strong enough to create a glare – and the whole scene is so dystopian, so tired and hollow and washed out, so much like standing in somebody else’s deja vu, that i try very hard to think of a time when Los Angeles is beautiful. maybe down by the water. maybe for one hour a day before the sun goes down. well, this is every other time. the light finally changes and i remind myself i’m probably projecting, this is a “me” thing. and i turn the corner and ascend the steps to the coffee shop, pissed off when i remember a run club meets here every Friday morning.