Mourning LA, and Pure Life, and Heart in a Voice

*Updated with photos from the Daily Mail. I just went through a gallery from this photographer and it was so similar to what I saw the day I wrote this, I decided to add some of them.*

I was in downtown LA today. It looked like a summer blockbuster featuring sci-fi urban ruin. I have been on bustling, involved outdoor movie sets before, and some part of my mind was looking for makeup artists as my husband drove and I stared out the window. Scanning for a makeup artist provided for a sense of sanity. Their grounding energy, and fanny packs of blusher brushes. Women who barely ever talk, inspire relaxation and calm, keen observers who catch every detail on a face from far away, catch the precise moment they can step in to powder, like a ninja.

My mind had drifted toward imagining makeup artists in order to manage the reality of passing people who were hovering over needles, and a man crouching inside a ball of eerie smoke, and other depraved madness.

Lost souls among tolerant ones. The “regular” people tolerating this around them were what made it surreal, and made the ruin seemed staged, made me search for the makeup artists and a camera. There was a man standing in the middle of the street in a kind of forward fold, still as a stone.

Then passing him nonchalantly was a woman walking her dog like he wasn’t even there. A businessman was checking his phone against the number on the building. While ignoring a young girl, inebriated, crazed, hugging a stop sign, with matted hair that hasn’t been washed and brushed in months. I imagined her mother’s empty and sparkling clean kitchen sink, maybe somewhere in Pasadena. I imagined her mother picking up her phone to look at it, and putting it back down again.

I looked for the restaurant that feels exactly like Italy, that we took a train to, on Valentine’s Day. I know it’s still open. Last time we were downtown I had asked “will we ever go again? maybe for lunch? I know we can’t take the train, no one does, but maybe drive to it?”

“No” my husband had said. “Not a chance.” This time I didn’t say anything.

When I got home, I felt so jangled in my heart I went to the bookstore in my neighborhood where I talk to the nuns. I seek solace at the chapel in the back corner of the place, and pray in the quiet. There is a huge homeless encampment right down the street from it now, so I waited until the parking lot was empty to park.

I didn’t stop to chat. I said hi to the nun as I passed the front counter of the bookstore. I told her I’m just goin’ to the chapel today. She said “someone special is waiting for you there.” “Oh?” I perked up. “Yes! Jesus!” She said it so sweetly, it made me start to cry. Despite the “sci-fi blockbuster” around her too, she was still cheerful. They do not leave and return at night anymore, and if they do, the other sisters meet them in the lot and they check around the car before getting out, etc. They’ll wake up and find a naked man relieving himself beside their outdoor picnic table. They are ambushed by the encampment and the hotel next door, which is a construction site. Politicans were paid to renovate it, creating a home for people who do not want one.

I kneeled under Mary, put my face in my hands like my Mom used to after communion, and bawled my eyes out.

I drove my little Chevy to LA almost 25 years ago and it felt as if pure life sparkled and stretched out all around me. Nothing about Los Angeles is pure life anymore. It is only pure life if I never go far from my own four walls. Beyond that, it is pure life only once purity has been extracted from stench and death. That is the legacy of those who created this mess, by design.

On top of this, I learned Sinead O’Connor passed away. I loved her music, her unapologetic conviction, her certainty of things that remained invisible to others. She made a place for things I felt but couldn’t explain. From her, I learned how to put my heart into my voice, just from listening and singing along. I played her music over and over. I was listening to her on my way to LA, and singing at the top of my lungs.