i flew into LAX on september 11th.

last year, when that day came around, i remember spontaneously sobbing while driving home on the pali. i was listening to some NPR story told from the point of view of a taxi driver whose first customers were driving to the one year anniversary of the attack on the towers. the story wasn't especially heart wrenching, but i had this sudden sweeping realization six years ago, someone had tried to destroy something that i felt a part of in 2007.

i won't claim to be a new yorker. i'm going to the city for only the fifth time next month, but it has come to represent something unequivocal in my mind. maybe it has something to do with the theatre or curry hill or fashion week or the fact that the new york times contains the words "new york", but that city has developed into the undoubted setting for my personal consummation. i feel dumb and may regret saying this, but through all my travels around the country and the world, there is no other place where i can see myself making a life.

to me, l.a. is the anti- new york. though i have come to appreciate certain parts of the greater los angeles area (namely malibu and the fairfax district), i could never imagine living in a place where rush hour constitutes 7 hours of the waking day, you can't drink the water, the clouds are brown with dirt, people want to be celebrities, and you can't walk anywhere. it is sprawling while new york is compact, ethnically white and hispanic while new york has a million faces, and bitchy where new york is... upfront(?)

if anything, the two things l.a. DOES have are Disneyland, and four of the best people in the world.