One year ago, I traveled to Los Angeles for six days to visit the University of Southern California with my roommate who was planning to attend film school. We stayed in Chinatown and rode the gold-line metro into the city everyday. I remember seeing the sights and the university and the beach and wondering to myself if I would ever be back.
Almost one year later I am sitting in a coffee shop on Union St. borrowing their wireless internet because the wireless at my small apartment off of Venice Blvd. isn't installed yet. I think back over the last year and I see myself leaving the beach at sunset and vowing that I would return and touch the water when I had earned my way back. I remember the nine months of waiting to hear if USC was the destination of my roommate, meaning a travel partner. I remember packing up the car and moving van and leaving tiny Woodstock Georgia for a 2,200 mile trip across the country and through the desert.
I've been in L.A. for almost a month now and this city has surprised me from day one. The people are nothing like the stereotype says but the weather is. The opportunities greater but the pool deeper. The sorrow more real but the dreams are more fantastic. On a resume I submitted to my talent agency I wrote that I want to inspire and to explore meaning and purpose. I quoted James Dean:
Dream like you'll live forever,
Live like you'll die today.
In my first pontification of the new year I want to look forward to the time in my life that will surely resonate for the rest of my days. My time in L.A. this time around has no time table long or short. My life has reached a point beyond safety nets and testing the water.
III,
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