My LA

It costs a lot of money for me to travel to Cali.  I don't mind - I just wish it were in my power to do it more.  Having said that though, it is all the more precious to me each time I get there.  There are things I love about Cali that are just IN me because I lived there.  There's the silly desperation of seeing footage from an LA freeway in a movie or TV show, where I crane my neck to get a view of the freeway signs and see if I can get a bearing.  There's the odd but endearing familiarity of seeing glimpses of overpasses covered in graffiti and ivy in a way I've only ever seen there.  Those palm trees poking up into the smog and the sunshine.  The familiar signs of motels and restaurants and stores that make themselves seen from the sides of the freeway.  The way-too-many lanes filled with way-too-many cars.  Yep - even that dumb traffic can make me feel nostalgic.  

But I wish I could fully convey to you the feeling I get, after countless hours - well over 25 - in the air over my own vast island-continent home, and then the seemingly endless stretch of the Pacific - to finally get a glimpse of that California coast.  It makes me choke up every time.  It makes me choke up now to type this and see it in my mind's eye.  It's so familiar and so dear and so many years between visits, that it just causes this emotion in me at that moment that only grows as we close in on LA.  It starts as a tickle and grows to a warmth and by the time I touch down, I swear that emotion almost has a smell and a taste about it that nothing else does.  We cross the coast and I look out the window taking it all in.  Those mountains, those brown hills, and LA nestled between them and the sea with its soupy smog layer like a shroud of mystery.  I know smog isn't meant to be a beautiful thing, but when you're as "homesick" as I am, even the smog seems endearing.  

We go into our inevitable holding pattern, circling ever lower and I can see the Hollywood Hills, the smudge of the white Hollywood sign, the blocks of homes and shops and schools.  The tangled grey ribbon of freeways.  The cars - driving, gridlocked, parked in the streets bumper to bumper, parked at the malls, at the beaches.  I see the poor neighbourhoods - everyone too close together, the unkempt yards.  I see the rich ones - large homes set well-back, swimming pools, tennis courts - and I think about the people who live there and how many of them have a hand in the electronic media that bombards us and and defines us right around the world.  We get lower and now I can make out signs and I get a thrill of excitement as I read them - In-n-Out, Del Taco, Conoco, Bank of America, La Quinta, Ralphs - so mundane and every day to you who live there, but such a sight for the sore eyes of one who did and doesn't any more.  I see the familiar sprawl of LAX runways and the iconic retro-spaceship restaurant.  I try not to think about the horrid immigration line I have to stand in - the one where I get treated like an alien when I feel I am not one.   More on that in a moment.

The plane touches down and I get a thrill of exhilaration knowing I'm on US soil, that before much longer I'll be one of the millions who throng this amazing city.  The anonymity amongst the familiar. Precious irony!

We stop at the terminal and I impatiently unclick my seatbelt long before the light goes off.  I feel annoyed at the fellow passengers thwarting my desire for a hasty exit to the terminal and my beloved LA beyond.  I try to maintain my manners as I make a place for myself in the now-crowded aisle and retrieve my carry-on from the overhead lockers and then stand in the confined space trying not to inhale through my nose the assault of the aroma of too many economy class passengers who have stewed in their own juices for the past 20 hours or so from Sydney.  Finally the door is opened and the line of humanity begins to flow out the bottle-neck onto the air bridge.  Air bridge.  Stairs.  More stairs.  A passageway.  Travelator.  Ramp.  Passageway.  Immigration.  I head straight for the bathrooms and relish in the space after the confinement of the ones on the plane that have grown ever grottier on the hours of our journey.  The bathrooms here are huge and basic and old.  But even here I begin to smile at little things that tell me I'm "home" - starting with paper toilet seat covers which are a rarity in Australia.  Damn, I love those things!  I wash my hands for a long time and behold my economy-class ravaged face and hair.  I try to freshen up, brush my teeth, drag a brush through hair traumatised by pressurisation and condensed human breath.  I smile at myself and try not to giggle or cry.  I'm home!

I go back out to the Immigration lines and watch with envy as US residents move to the less-crowded far end of the arrivals hall.  I try to scope out the shortest line for processing "aliens" such as myself.  Immigration and security officers firmly direct people as they see fit.  Last visit I got in line behind a famous Australian foreign correspondent.  He smiles at me.  He's used to being spotted by fellow Aussies I suppose.  I smile back and try not to stare.  

After quite some time I make it to the Immigration desk.  The officers always seem young and bored.  Nice manners, a sense of humour,  and cute accents mean nothing to them.  They've seen it all before and they'll see it all - and plenty else - again.  I can't help but think about how I probably lived in California before they did.  I know all the words to all the American patriotic songs.  I can sing the national anthem and pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. I won a school-wide essay contest in 5th grade with the theme "What America Means to Me."  I possibly know more about American history than they do.  They open my passport and eye my face with suspicion, ask me the usual questions, finally give me that precious stamp and wave me on.  I wait impatiently with the jostling masses of passengers and trolleys for the luggage carousel to bring me my bags.  They finally come, I hoist them onto my trolley and make for the doors.  Customs asks me about declarations.  I tell them about the cookies and candy I've brought for friends.  This usually gets me through faster than not declaring anything and being searched.  

The doors slide open and I push my trolley out into the pickup area. I can see through the glass doors to the smog-filtered sunlight beyond.  The sunlight never quite looks that way anywhere else in the world.  I love it.  Before long I'm zipping along the freeway with whatever friend has collected me, the wheels whistling on the ruts in a way that never seems the same anywhere else.  The palm trees, the freeway signs, the too-many cars in the too-many lanes....it's all here.  It's always been here.  I always imagine that it's glad I'm back.  My LA.