I'm back in Portland. After five days in Los Angeles I am overstimulated, overtransported, overconversated, overobligated and underslept. After twenty-six years on Earth I have found the one word that sums up all of my various impressions of LA, and it is "saturated". It perfectly encompasses everything from the blaring widescreen televisions at every gate in Bob Hope Airport to relatives who can talk at you for two hours without ever stopping to hear your responses.
Next year, in my place, I will send a crude robot with sophisticated sensory apparati but next to no capacity for mobility or speech. It will watch celebrity news on the ubiquitous televisions, it will listen to the unceasing talk of everyone around it, and it will spend two hours of every day riding in an enormous SUV and looking out the window at corporate sponsorship and pressure to conform and the baffling monotony of 40 solid miles of suburbs, and probably no one will notice that it isn't me. It will report back to me here in Portland, and I will carefully download all of its sensations onto a hard drive which I will then leave to be run over by a train.
I woke up at 5:45 this morning and napped on two airplanes and one airport and spent the afternoon uselessly at work. My immediate goal is to be asleep by 9:00 pm. Bye.
Posted by dianna at December 26, 2007 08:55 PM