Of Personal Interest

Los Angeles can be a difficult place at the best of times. I love it here, but one who has achieved maturity loves with full knowledge of the good and the bad in something. There's plenty of bad in Los Angeles, and I managed to experience a lot of the bad points in the midst of what was really a good day the other day. Because it's in my nature, I'm going to focus on the bad things. Why is it that so many of the good things in life are things you can't talk about?

Naturally it was raining. I expect it's raining here today, although as you know I often write in advance of weather making good on the weatherman's promises. When it's raining, I am like most Angelenos in that I prefer to hole up at home until it's over. I have always enjoyed the rain's peculiar beauty from the inside of a window. Growing up in a desert, I valued the rain's preservation of our fragile existence, but woe betide the rain that fell on me.

The rain exacerbates the already shaky grasp of local drivers on proper technique. This is not any original observation even by me, but the day in question was made very interesting by the effects of the rain and the traffic on my attempts to conduct my business. Wouldn't it have to be the way that I'd have to go all the way across town via the most congested arteries in the city on such a day? I very nearly failed to, and with an audition at the end of the journey.

In the end, the story was one not of traffic or weather or local interest, but of yet more evidence of the persistent futility that is worrying. I just worried myself to death over the consequences of being late and found that I had to go to fairly little trouble in order to have my chance at the audition. That done, I fumbled my way further through the rain on my way to some rather pleasant evening plans. It was a good day, really.