Los Angeles is mostly road. Los Angeles is randomly scattered black ribbons of highway with yellow and white lines and dashes - a grid of mystifying meaning - with shiny metal mechanisms zooming this way and that, their steel-shaded hoods reflecting the sun back to the heavens (and into my eyes), and at night millions of white lights blink and shimmer as they go one way and millions of red lights flash and glide as they go another. Los Angeles is the helicopters that hover over the traffic jams and nine-car crashes. Los Angeles is my second car - bought for safety, not for speed. Los Angeles, no matter how detailed the map or how precise the directions, tries its hardest to take me somewhere new. Contrary to popular belief, Los Angeles is the journey - not the destination.

My new car is silver like steel with little flecks of mirror paint to bounce the sun back to the heavens and into my eyes. It has a cassette player for all my mix tapes and a driver's side window that, indeed, effortlessly rolls down. It has a gas pedal and a brake - no clutch because it's an automatic. It has California license plates and very few smog-making emissions. It has a back seat that folds down to make a bigger trunk. Its gear shift is between the passenger and driver seats, not on the steering wheel. Its emergency brake shift is behind the gear shift. It's large but small for a large car. I know deep inside that it's a she - my first female car - and now I'm not afraid to drive a chick around. She's dependable and reliable and I can't wait to plaster the perfect bumper sticker on her behind. I'm very happy about my new car. I'm quite sad that my new car isn't really mine at all - it's his new car because his parents are paying for it. I don't think I'm going to have a car that's really mine anytime soon. So I'll make do with her. I found her, anyway, so I should have at least some pride in her.

I find it funny that Los Angeles's full name is translated to "The City of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula". So, really, it isn't the city of angels at all - it's the city of Mary, mother of Jesus. I wonder what she thinks about her city. It certainly isn't very immaculate, though there seems to be quite a bit of the conception part going on. I wonder what Mary thinks of the seemingly infinite grid of asphalt and lit cars zooming this way and that. I wonder what Mary thinks of bleached hair and tanned skin and overpriced clothing and studio loft apartments and Indian food and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tinsel Town and the Staples Center and the yachts parked down near Long Beach and the desert and the city fighting the desert and the images projected in the theatre in the school near the very tip of the end of the county. I wonder what she thinks about me zooming this way and that in my new chick car with the driver's side window rolled down and the radio singing. Mary, mother of Jesus: I think there are many other people whose names would be far more appropriate to use as a title for this city. Yet your name on this city is amusingly ironic - especially since everyone's seemingly deleted your part of the name and is just giving the angels the credit. I wonder what the angels think about that too.

Not much of Los Angeles is really something to write home about. There are a lot of chain stores and chain restaurants, a lot of nondescript homes, a lot of strip malls and plain old malls and unoriginal architecture and parking garages. Even the lavish homes and buildings are laughably so, laughably out of place with the rest of the city. I think the thing about Los Angeles that sets it apart from all other cities is what's between the buildings - the roads, and the people in cars on the roads, and the constant travel towards a destination that immediately changes when reached. Cell phones in the car, police cars around the cars, big gristly wrecks - modern art performances made by the cars. Earthquakes that makes everything move around a bit. This is a city of movement, and the faster the better. Our angels must be having a heck of a time trying to keep up. Los Angeles is the everyday people in their everyday cars going to their everyday places, and talking on their cell phones without using their turn signals, with their angels frantically flying behind them.

I am drinking echinacea tea. The paper attached to my tea bag says, "Recognize that the other person is you."

I don't see much of that going on in Mary's city. People are all trying to be different to be special to be important, and by trying to be different they must make everyone else different from themselves. I see a lot of alienation in Mary's city. I wonder exactly what Mary thinks - the woman who sacrificed her life for a son who was destined to make everyone see one another as themselves. I wonder what she must think, now - when we've gone back to being us and they're them again, and there are still feuds and wars and corruption and envy and pride and prejudice. I'm sorry, Mary. Hopefully it wasn't all in vain.

Those streets are dry and dusty, because it rarely rains here. When it does rain the whole city breathes a deep sigh, and we're all the same in the fact that we're all exhaling, and then all the cars without anti-lock brakes freak out and cause nineteen-car collisions on the highways because roads that are newly wet with all the debris and dirt and dust and oil from months of no rain are seeping up from the asphalt - and nobody in Mary's city knows how to drive in the rain.

Ah, Mary - we still love you. We decorate everything in a fake winter celebration even before All Soul's Day is over and gone, and we spend too much on gifts for others, and perhaps its the only time in the year when we think of others - "What would she like for Christmas?" Even if we do temporarily put ourselves in someone else's shoes for the sole purpose of commercialized celebration - we still do it, don't we? We still see one another as ourselves.

Ah, Mary - take the wheel and show me where to go. Let the angels fly with me and keep me from harm. Let my dual air bags and crumple zones work if I zoom too far ahead of them. Keep the roads alive and their drivers dreaming. Most of all, Mary - keep your city safe. Amen.

from Bijou Mondays, 2002