02:22
This place I call home
I love that part, coming from Hollywood, coming down the slope on the 405, when the Valley is in full panoramic view. It is then not just the Valley—it is a hundred billion stars cascading down the horizon.
For the past several months I’ve been in conflict with this city. This wretched, beautiful city. I know too much about it. This city is a suffocating cocoon of artificiality and quiet death. But it is also, first and foremost, my home. Its heart still pumps ripe, young blood. Dreamers’ blood, workers’ blood, families, and mothers, artists, and migrants, the pretty, the hideous. I can feel her heart bursting inside my chest at night.
It’s so easy to hate you when I’m not inside you, when I’m not here to watch endless cars flashing by, their lights blazing by like brilliant white and red strokes on an asphalt canvas. All the lights glittering among more lights and people and faces. You shine like the biggest, brightest bulb and the pale meek moon cannot help but sit in silent awe. The only stars visible here are the ones we stomp on, and I can never forgive you for that.
But you are the most golden part of this golden state. The sun loves you, he lowers himself to you, enveloping your trees, homes and roads with his yellow veil.
But you wound like a rusty dagger. You are ruthless in your ways. I hate your intersections, congested with guns and fast, foreign cars. You are heartless and hearts here are weary, heavy because of you.
But you fill me with impulse and want. I walk your streets alone and feel as if I have all the company in the world.
There was a couple tonight in West Hollywood, sweet and young. I did not resent them. I did not envy them. I was happy for them. He kissed her cheek then her head, and I was happy they had each other.
And you are so youthful, despite your history. Your hideous history we seem to all suddenly forget. You are a desert, remember that. Your existence is at the hands of men. But what of your ruin? You wreck the hands of men who furiously labor beneath your angry fist of a sun. You are fruitful because of them.
You’re a bitch and a cunt. A lover and a friend. I can’t remove your scent from my skin and thus, must carry you forever with me. I see you as I see myself. I see your flaws and your strengths; I see your losses and victories; I see how much beauty and terror resides within you, and it scares me.
I think so much about you because I miss you.
00:20
“The Valley”
It’s good to be back. I shit a lot on the Valley, but it’ll always be my Valley— the home to my sad, and ugly, beautiful and memory-drenched suburban life. You are my beloved and loathed San Fernando Valley. I’ve never liked you in the daytime. You look yellow and dry, rotten and wretched. But at night—oh, at night you glisten. Streetlights, lamplights, house lights, all beneath sapphire and ruby gemstones pinned against a black velvet sky. I’d forgotten how lovely it was to drive around here at night. To stare out rolled down windows, listening to loud music, smoking cigarettes with good company. Not uttering a single word. Sometimes talking until our throats hurt. Fro-yo or ice cream—it never really mattered. Sitting in cars at the top of Reseda, where identical houses look like a billion lit candles floating at sea. Hunting down food carts. Eating gourmet grilled cheese, looking like dirty hipsters sitting on yellow bins. And they weren’t lying when they said the Valley is the porn industry’s pioneering region—San Pornando Valley. That’s the best part. And that’s the only part they ever ask about.
My Valley—vast and secretive, plastic and so organic. There’s so much I could say about you but I’m getting sleepy, dreamy…I hate you and love you. I can’t stay inside you for too long or I’ll start clawing at my own skin with restlessness. But I come back to you. I’ll always come back to you, even if it’s simply because I want to be reminded of how boring you can be. Because I’ll never stop being a Valley girl. After all, you did taint my vocal chords with that distinctive tone. The Valley Girl vernacular—the indelible “like” and “totally.” I’m a Mexican Valley Girl. No one ever believes me, but you know the truth.
I come back to you because you wash me over with a wave of soul-entangling nostalgia. Because, despite how much I try to deny it, I actually miss you sometimes, and not just because Frank Kappa, Tom Petty, and Bing Crosby all reference you. But that’s still pretty cool.
