Dimming Dreams Brighter Lights and Cloudy Days on the Sunset Strip

Hello everyone,

Greetings from Hollywood, California.  I'm fairly well rested after my second night's sleep in a non-wheeled stationary dwelling.  The cold I was battling has won and screwed me over during the treaty negotiations. I have the runny nose and sore throat and I'm a little low on energy but its alright, fame will save me, its just around the corner.  The slight problem is by the time you get around that corner, fame's gone around the other one...and so on...but there's always that chance...and in the meantime there are a lot of people out here walking around corners with the sniffles.

I had those sniffles 10 years ago, when I packed everything I had into the trunk and drove out here from Corpus Christi, Texas, with dreams of being a powerhouse actor that fame couldn't possibly ignore, but, of course, making it look like I could take it or leave it because its all about craft, after all, isn't it?

I was out here less than a year.  It just wasn't my scene, man...I think that's what I told people.

So the prospect of coming around a decade later, older and different with a little, only a little, less hair, was exciting and a bit nerve racking.  I was able to stew in those feelings and memories on the bus(or, as I like to call it now, a "mobile iphone deviation station") from Las Vegas, filled with people who looked like they've made the Vegas-LA trip a million times and could care less about the beautiful desert outside with all its cacti, tiny, spiny, middle sized, gray, yellow and green cacti and cacti so big they looked like they were trying to impersonate trees spreading from beyond the interstate out to the great grey brown and jagged mountains.  I was blown away from it all, its a marvelous landscape.  However, its a redundant one, and even I got little bored with the view so I took the next logical action.  I read Kafka and put my feelings on hold.

I pulled right up to Hollywood Blvd., where my good friend Luis was waiting for me.  Its good to see Luis.  It had been several years.  We were both born in the same tiny, one floor hospital in Sinton, Texas but didn't meet each other until we were in our late twenties in Chicago.  We had a mutal friend and we both had what that mutual friend would call, "serious drinking issues".  Luis was on his way to New York and I wouldn't see him until a few years later when I was on my way to New York.  I crashed at his place where we took up where we left off, drinking, carousing, guitar picking and general reveling in our own poetic delusional torture.  Luis then left NY and began his long and wayward and ultimately redeeming journey out here, to the one story metropolis that is LA.  Both Luis and I are sober now, which is a good thing...really.  And its always a good thing to find out a friendship didn't disappear with the bottle.

I've only walked around Hollywood since I've been here, not looking for old ghost but not ignoring any, either.  Some things look and feel the same, some things don't, that kind of thing.  I do remember liking LA back then, really, I was just very angry.  I like it now.  I like being less angry, too.

Luis and I walked around together last night around the Hollywood and Vine area, or what I like to call the lengerie and bong district.  Its Charles Bukowski's old stomping grounds.  We're both big Bukowski fans and we laughed that Luis lives in the area but is sober.  Then we stopped laughing and pondered how we both have a bit of a hard time reading Bukowski, now.  We both still admire him, its just a different read.  We turned back toward Luis' apartment before we reached the part of Hollywood Blvd where the movie stars fell and engraved themselves into the sidewalk and aspiring movie stars are hired to look like those legendary engraved movie stars.  We walked back down Sunset, passed the Paladuim, then by the St. Moritz motel where more thoughts of Bukowski came up, more laughter, then more quiet pondering.

Today I plan to hit the beach and take the obligatory photos of the Pacific Ocean.  I'd like to take the obligatory photo of the sunset but its been cloudy so I may not be obliged to take the photo...we'll see.  And, really, nothing's obligatory for me on this visit to the city of angels.  Its been a good thing.

Stay tuned to see if the sun will set or not.  Until then, take care...

Todd