This has felt like a long month, a much longer A to Z than the previous two. Why is that? I had the songs, many offerings from my friends, unlike last year when everything was willy-nilly…maybe that was the key. Don’t have everything planned out so you couldn’t change if you didn’t feel like doing it on a given day? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just life and having life “happenings” occur.
Anyway, I’m going with “Under the Bridge,” which was the first Red Hot Chili Peppers song I ever heard. They all look so, so young in the video. I guess we all did back then. 😉
My City
At 2 am, I’m walking through my city after a perfect date. We may not last for another, although she’s beautiful, funny, and quintessentially California, but my city holds me in the palm of its hand, a lover til the end.
Can you be in love with a place, feel the warm caress of its temperatures around you, the vibrancy of its life invigorating you? I’m in love with this place, this place is me. Every morning awakening to the horns, the sea, the lingo, I know I’m where I belong. I feel its blood pulsate through me. I feel its life in my brain.
The bikini-clad girls dance in the sand, squealing when the cold Pacific embraces their thighs. They’ve sunned all day and now as the sun slowly sets, they drink their vodka-laden cosmos, tip-toe dance, and become one with LA.
When I was a boy, my dad told me, “This city is your lifeblood, kid. It’s who we are. Women come and go, but this city, man, this is what we’re about.”
He wasn’t wrong. I’ve fallen in love, chased drugs, been someone else a time or two, but it’s the city I feel, the music of it that builds in my blood and sets me free. I am free.
At 2 am, the traffic continues, horns honk, laughter splays into the night like a meteorite streaking across the midnight sky, although with all of our lights, we never see. I’m in love and it’s all here, the smell, the sounds, the life of the city. Fast living, my uncle called it. Life living, I think. LA’s a woman and she’s opened her fineness to me.
end
Sascha Darlington
✨
Your city couldn’t be more different from my sleepy little seaside town, but I love it! Slow living I call it!
My A-Z of Children’s Stories
Thanks, Keith. “My City” is probably a mesh between LA, NYC, and DC, although compared to the other two DC is probably sleepy. I hope to live in a seaside town someday. Right now I just get there as often as I can. 🙂
Laughter splays into the night — great line.
Thank you so much! 🙂
I’m new to this, so I don’t know if my comment posted. I don’t see it.
I said that the line, laughter splays into the night is a great line. You can be sure that no one else in the history of writing has ever written that line.
Oh, sorry, now I see my first comment. So this is actually my third : )
🙂 Not a problem.
Nice change. Probably how everyone feels about “their” city, for those who have one. When I read this, was reminded of the song, “Built this City (on rock and roll)” by Jefferson Starship.
I vaguely remember that song.