Caught in the LA spotlight

Caught in the LA spotlight

A bony limb elbows me in the back. This is followed by a perfunctory apology, shouted loudly like everything else in the bustling bar. The muted colors of black and purple are uncharacteristically harsh and the lights are a little too bright.

I look at Peter. He has big eyes, just like me. We have the same question: what now? Our friends in LA who were showing us around the city went out for a cigarette and left us alone for a moment in the trendy bar.

Neither Peter nor I had been in a place like this for six months. After leaving London we very quickly fell to the slower pace of the Pacific and were comfortably operating on island time (“maybe now, maybe later, maybe tomorrow, maybe never”).

In London, I lived on hyperspeed, a burden readily borne and often cited by any city dweller looking to prove their worth (I'm so busy = I'm so in demand). On the road, this hyperspeed slowed to a stroll, so the bright lights of LA were a little unsettling.

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The change of pace makes me wonder how I cope with the megacities of South America. It also made me realize that I am no longer what I have identified as for the past two decades: a city girl. I planned this trip as a short break from working life, a stopover before I returned to London and took another job in publishing.

For Peter it was a journey full of possibilities; of changing countries, jobs and lives.

For a long time he tried to convince me to live in a small village somewhere, if not abroad then somewhere in the English countryside. Every time I answered the same thing: “I would be bored.” LA changed my mind. Maybe I would be fine without the noise, pollution, traffic and stress.

Maybe it's the sheer exposure: the longer you live in an environment, the more you crave the opposite. Maybe after five years on an island I would long for the gray streets of London. Maybe better weather, fresher food and nicer people would get boring after a while. I don't know exactly.

What I do know is that I finally want to find out.
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