Rollin'

7th Street flora market



JeonJu Restaurant on Olympic Blvd.

I walked to the local Avis when I woke up and rented a mini van so I could go pick up all of my earthly belongings from the Amtrak station and start to really move into my new place. My luggage traveled a different route than I, hence its delayed arrival to the beautiful gothic union station in downtown LA. I realized how much power material possessions have when making a place one's own. With all my stuff here I took advantage of a surge of confidence and began to rearrange the kitchen cabinets and pick up the apartment a bit, something I had been hesitatnt to do beforehand for fear of intrusion on the incumbant roommate, Adam. The confidence I felt is related to entitlement, something I've been thinking a lot about lately. My material slef acted as a kind of ticket to prove that I indeed have half the power of what goes on in this apartment. It's telling, and slightly disturbing, that it took the collection of my things to get that ticket punched. Why did I feel free, but incomplete before? The eradication of desire and fear from one's life is what I talked about a lot with my no-smoking-shrink this past year in Madison. The incompleteness I felt without my stuff is certainly related to not being free from either of those things.

Cruising in the mini van was a blast. Saturday meant there was not too much traffic. With the one-day freedom of a car, I brought my map with and did some good long range explorations. On the 45-minute drive to union station from my apartment in Westwood, I made a great stop over at what I would describe as the farmer's market for flowers and plants on 7th & San Pedro, just east of downtown. There were shop owners lined up for blocks and blocks, almost exclusively selling flora of all sorts. The neighborhood was fascinating -- alternating homeless people with their tents set up on various streets were simply part of the neighborhood. They were neither ignored nor ominous. The one thing that area shared was that the only English to be found was from these homeless people. Most others spoke Spanish or Japanese. I found a couple nice plants for the homestead, and was happy to take advantage of the car for such purposes. After grabbing my boxes from union station I continued back west on Olymia Blvd, the main drag through Korea town. I stopped over at a classic LA mini two story strip mall where one of the stores was called Han Li Piano. It was in the minority of signs that included English translations, and for some reason it cracked me up. It was at that point that realized the emotions that LA can rip out of you: elation, fear, sorrow, openness, coldness, hate, happinness, hopelessness. They're all there for the taking and leaving, but most often I'm guessing there will be some very humanistic mixture of them all. I ate hot stone kim chee bibimbop alone with the Koreans. It rocked my world.