June 26, 2021 Commentary from a hotel room

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June 26, 2021 Commentary from a hotel room: If you were anywhere in the LA area today you would have to believe we are over all our troubles. Pacific Highway was bumper to bumper. I-405 was taking about 45 minutes from Inglewood to Westwood. A restaurant in Malibu reprimanded me for not making a reservation and promised a table in two to three hours. And it is just a regular Saturday morning. No masks. The entire memory wiped away and an unknown new World is being welcome through the blaring rap on Santa Monica beach welcoming the Birders, the Boarders and the cyclists and the gentle refreshing aroma of ganja, legal in LA, whiffs through the air. California is comfortably numb. Sitting on the sand, by myself, surrounded by thousands frolicking on the beach. 600,000 deaths wiped from memory. Summer is back. As I got numbed by the experience of watching life going by me I realized that I am a pessimist in this context. I am trying to find a reason to be anxious. The zoom gathering in the morning was a stark difference of the Malibu pier of the afternoon. There is a lockdown on. The police are stopping cars and offering fines for being out when they were not supposed to be. It took about 45 minutes from Hawthorne to Westwood. Traffic as far as the eye could see on 405. The reality narratives that I live in are so starkly different that reconciliation is impossible. But I try to make sense of the realities, I sit on the beach at Long Beach and I think of the humid monsoon night where the lockdown goes on. My bondhu is in the kitchen preparing a dinner for the invited guests. I listen to the voices from the hot and humid place and I stand by my Jeep Grand Cherokee as the sun sets over Manhattan Beach on this crisp Southern California night. COVID-19 intertwined everything for me. The house across the street from UCLA hospital. Fourth Floor. The raccoon family walking by my front door on Linbrook Drive and the live Parshe Maach (Paarshe Fish) on the verandah. They are now all held together by the elastic on the mask. And the people of these places. There is good in everything if you look deep. Deeper than the 600,000 you may be able to recover some good. The connections that were deepened must remain; I think. But in the meantime, the Universal Studio inspired Southern California architecture of  Bel Air and Beverly Hills call for the all time statement: “I wish they all could be California” And you know the rest.

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