purgatory

Irvine is like a dream. Someone else’s dream, and not an altogether pleasant one. The kind of dream where you’re driving for an eon down a wide road lined with palm trees and on every side you see big boxes of buildings and you think, “It can’t be another industrial park” and it feels, yes, it feels like you’ve driven for hours and you haven’t gone anywhere at all, your tires skid on the slick asphalt and spin in place for eternity.

When I checked into the hotel, the woman pulled out their pathetic version of a map of the area. She drew a star to indicate the hotel, then she highlighted the major streets and circled four other places. “This is where you’ll go. To shop.” She smiled. She’d circled four huge malls in four surrounding towns.

Yup. Irvine, far as I can tell, has no walking streets. No city life. No heart. Lots of big wide boulevards. Lots of enormous building complexes and inside of each, acres of cubicles each with a few pictures, a calendar maybe, some attempt to personalize the space. But inside that sea of eternal slippage, how can you?

I’m more homesick than I’ve been since, oh, age twelve when I went off to camp and bawled into the phone the first night away. I don’t adore Los Angeles, but at least it’s a real place, for better and for worse. And that’s where my men are. And my cats. And my life.

Can I go home now? This sucks.

Posted by Tamar at July 13, 2004 07:49 PM