los angeles and god.

After New York, I was supposed to take an overnight bus up to Vermont, but my grandmother suddenly had a knee problem and was probably lying. I suggested I could stay with my aunt and uncle who live next door to her on the lumberyard. She even told me not to call them, probably because they would have given her away. Next on the itinerary would have been to head South, but all my plans required more notice than a sudden "I'll be there tomorrow." My own brother told me he could only see me for a meal maybe, and that I should book with him two months in advance next time. I called my father—at least he wanted me—and flew home to New Mexico for a week and did hardly anything. We did go to the Sandia Casino for dinner one night, and that was a totally new experience. A typical New Mexico demographic in front of slot machines with a live band performing country followed by "Hot in Herre." My father thought the cheap buffet food was gourmet.

The first week I was back, I went to the Museum of Creation just outside San Diego with my friend Jenny whom I hadn't seen since 1998. She's studying at Oxford to become a vicar. As dedicated to the Church of England as she is, she's no creationist or fundamentalist, so it was the perfect accompaniment into a museum intent on proving the only real Christians believe it all became in seven days. With lavish displays illustrating each of those seven days as well as the arguments against stem-cell research and DNA in general, this museum is a true spectacle and a delight. It's amazing what lengths they go to to illustrate scientific backing on creation. They argue that the chicken came before the egg, and that God made man in his image specifically with the purpose of having a form to take on later. They showed gods from Pagan religions, and as I stared into back-lit transparent photos of relics from some of the greatest civilizations past and present, a woman in palazzo pants pushing a stroller commented to the children following her, "that's what they thought God looked like. He's not a cat." And I think we all assume Adam and Eve killed animals for their clothes, don't we?, but on the contrary: "The first physical death was that of the animals whose skins God used to clothe Adam and Eve." By this point, Jenny was emotionally involved. But who can say they're wrong? Science is not about obtaining pure truth, and many "scientific studies" make completely valid points that disprove each other, so why not build an argument-installation-maze hypothesizing over geologic and biologic evidence that a book of fables had it right? Who's to say rainbows "didn't exist until the windows of heaven were opened"? Also, the museum is doing a DNA sample of any and all participants to prove that we all trace back to Adam and Eve. I really wanted to participate, but the right people weren't there, so now I have to call and get a kit sent to me.

Sorry for the flash-reflectant-filled photo, but I couldn't resist. On the sixth day of creation, the hand of God makes an appearance yet again, even in the display this time.

And, on the topic of religion, maybe you know about how 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores in Northern America into Kwik-E-Marts from "The Simpsons," in a "reverse product placement" campaign, one article calling it "making life imitate art." I was perhaps blessed with the opportunity to experience the life-art firsthand; at 2 AM we happened upon a Kwik-E in Venice. We stood in line at a security check, and then the cop let us in as soon as others emptied out. Out of the twenty-or-so customers in the store, 95% were male and under 25, as one might expect. They had life-size cardboard cut-outs of cartoon characters and were selling Squishies and donuts and sadly no Duff beer. I paid a dollar for one of the donuts, someone later commenting that it would probably triple in value in a few years. It's no wonder really that three of those Kwik-E Marts were placed in the LA area, the co-capital of simulation along with Las Vegas. I read in an article that the Kwik-E in Las Vegas is even run by an Indian, and when interviewed, he was not at all offended at the stereotype or that they chose his store.

When I was in New York I read an article in a locally-made book about public art called Creative Time in which Laurie Anderson said people in Los Angeles aren't happy for each other's success the way they are in New York. She also said people in Los Angeles can't separate "a hit" from good work, and if it doesn't sell, it's not good in the artist's mind. If I could even get Laurie's attention at my age and with the difference in "success" between us, I'd challenge her to define which people in LA, what she means by "happy" and to recount what unsatisfying personal experience she's judging a whole city by. I also read in an interview her saying she was happy with the world exactly the way it is. I don't suppose she's happy Los Angeles is full of selfish attention whores whom she compared with New Yorkers to elucidate a preference, meaning she's more happy with one part of the world than another. Maybe her traditional New York values have led her to this deep need and expectation of certain social behavior that she can't look beyond. No, I'm not going to stoop to her level and confine attitudes to a location, or define positive and negative attributes to characteristics based on such a tiny sample of a population. And if she has expectations, how can she be happy with the way things are, because—and I'm sure she'd agree—things never happen like you expect, and having an expectation is really the first step in a plan for changing things, not for being satisfied with them. Maybe if she followed her own "philosophies" on the world, she would have like LA.

In a Wal-Mart in Valencia, I meandered into the electronics section to peruse country hits compilations while waiting for the Vision Center to repair my glasses, which they inevitably didn't. Here I was, a small body peering up at a monumental wall of tv screens, all showing the same golf program, a few seconds of delay creating a blur echo across the wall. And then the program changed to a mini-documentary on Richard Serra's massive minimalist sculptures, talking about how the viewer of his work is framed in it, and so on. I turned the other direction, not even thinking about art or life imitating one another, or Los Angeles or suburbanization or my upbringing or the bureaucratic glitches in logic responsible for the circumstances, just enjoying this moment of entanglement between those arty theoreticals and the real life capitalist price-dropping imagery I was breathing in, knowing I'd never engage in the juxtaposition so nicely again.

A phone conversation:
Father: How's everything in Los Angeles?
Me: Dull.
Father: You should have stayed here. It's more exciting here.
Me: Why? What's happening?
Father: I'm making some pasta. I'm putting some horse radish in it.
Me: That's exciting?
Father: More exciting than tomatuh.