i didn’t write this morning, instead spending the time searching for apartments, my favorite way to really numb out and waste time. but i now know it was because i hadn’t experienced what i wanted to write about yet. all things happen in the order in which they are supposed to, so i can let go of the guilt i felt before leaving for brunch in not writing, to remembering that there are many hours in the day and i was meant to leave it until now.
i went to brunch along abbot kinney, a place i’ve been to many times over the 2 stints i’ve lived down in LA between 2006 – present. it was always a kind of shiny mecca, the coolest place with the coolest shops and restaurants and where everyone in my industry would hang out. 16 years ago when i first lived here, we would go to the other room almost every weekend in the summer and hang out of the open windows, laughing while drinking our beers we couldn’t afford, dancing at the brig, and finishing the night off by grabbing a slice of pizza at abbots down the street to soak up the booze before heading home (how DID we get home back then?). some weekends, we would go back the next day and have bottomless mimosas at lilly’s to keep the party going. and then later there was gjelina, and the gentrification of roosterfish, small shops making way to bigger box retailers and restaurants, all the while the sidewalks becoming crammed with strollers pushed by cool dads in fedoras vaping their juuls and their wispy, small breasted wives, long wild hair matching their drapey vintage dresses adorned with a lot of layered necklaces.
today while walking down abbot kinney i saw young girls of twenty something dressed up for brunch imbibing rosé (“let’s just get a bottle”) talking about their media or marketing careers and how they hooked up with the last guy they met on a dating app but he’s been ghosting her lately so she’s just gonna do her, and it struck me. this isn’t my abbot kinney anymore, and i don’t want it to be. i’m not sure i want to be in the “cool” area, packed with people. but i’m also not sure i’m ready to be secluded away from where the action and my friends are. but are my friends still here? am i working on building a community? i keep looking for places in areas, but i’m not sure where i want to go because i’m not sure of what i want to do. fuck, i’ve lost my motivation to write. is it because i’m on the cusp of admitting something to myself?
i guess the point that i’m trying to make or to circle back in, is that i feel as though i’m in some kind of long slow goodbye. and maybe i should go back and read my blogs from right before i left NY, and also some joan didion because i’m in the same mood. this doesn’t feel like home, but i’m trying to figure out where home is. and if you say it’s where the heart is, i’m going to punch you. because there might be some truth to that.
