miss adventures

Angeleno Independence

I was thinking last night, as a group of us fled towards the pier, on foot and mass exodus-style, that this Fourth of July was unlike the ones spent in the last 3 years, and that there were significant aspects of it that I would eventually remember well in comparing memories. I thought last night about how the last 3 had gone: last year spent mainly in my room on Third Ave. watching holiday programming and doing MBEs; the year before that, cavorting around New York fighting humidity; and the year before that, celebrating it eating Mexican food, with our former captors, in Londontown. This year, I felt that it was nice to be home, doing something for real. The only way to demonstrate your patriotism, after all, is with barbecue and beer.

Interesting that this blog tracks back those moments pretty easily. Funny how long I've been at this. When I read back to those posts, I think mostly of the stories I didn't tell on that same day. Everything here is all meant to trigger something else later on... everything we write, to ourselves and each other, is all a sort of code. But I'll be pretty literal this year.

I will want to remember Reyna, Jose, and Tammy. How Jose and I will say one or two things to each other that aren't really funny but will send the other into stitches because we know each other's motiviation too well. How Reyna and I invariably run off into a corner to swap girly stories. How Tammy, Reyna, and I will still be able to steal a moment away and recreate the 209 dynamic.

I will want to remember what it means to live by the beach. How the sand felt under my feet and how the wind felt on my skin, and how the fog diffused the sparkling lights of fireworks in the distance. In a way, they were all around us, and there was something very appealing about the look-left, look-right of it all.

I will want to remember being there for others. How kind my mother's friends were to me, and their endless encouragement.

I will want to remember long talks, and polite conversations, and things said in passing. How some things make you elated, and how other things, a little lower.

As if Angelenos needed to be any more independent... but I hope we all had enough beer and brats to make our Founding Fathers proud.

posted by Lucy Sloan @ 9:07 AM