Architecture of Cities: Los Angeles Fires Inspire Memory and Lament

Traveling in Time: We Must All Fall, But We Must Rise Again and Again

There is a silence to be discovered in the lives of others: There is a private window into worlds seen and unseen: The silence we see and the silence we don’t hear prevails in our everyday:

Marcel Proust and Walter Benjamin come to mind: Maybe Stephen King and one million writers beyond may be attributed as well: There are a trillion sentences and paragraphs that are spoken and not heard across the planet: The universe needs to be explored:

The Los Angeles fires of 2025 break my heart: Lives never known, lives of others vanish before we can know the depths of the individuals; the centuries that preceded us.

A city can be best understood through writers of life and lives that not only reveal but reveal fictional truths that we can find comfort in: The writers can entertain us with not only fact or fiction, but a vibe: A vibe is what allows you to close your eyes recounting the ways a writer has seduced you.

Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Joan Didion, Walter Mosley, Thomas Pynchon, Michael Connelly come to mind: Maybe one million more (to use a surfing phrase) might “Step into Liquid”: Live in the sublime and fascination; Narrate Los Angeles’s where, what, when: The vibe, the treble and the heart of a city, the heart of what we have never known or might never have seen.

Cinema also has accompanied my mind towards new adventures: The  navigational verve that  filmmakers have recorded and invented for us is an adventure into the vortex of our mind and earth: It has made for a glorious travel log: Somewhere between Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly and more take us directly into the vibe of period and place: Into those steps there are paths not taken: Ideas not understood: Lives seen and not seen.

I think about the fires’ as a way to mourn the loss of place but not memory: A celebratory memory singed with lament: I have crisscrossed the entire four-thousand Los Angeles County square miles: I know there was a time when going from Chatsworth to Venice; Malibu to Pasadena was all in a days’ work: I was photographing: People, places and dreams; My navigation was plotted by a protractor and  compass dancing over my head like Merlin’s children: I scurried across freeways and roads: Some and possibly most never to be seen again:

There is no capture without realities’ dreams leading the way: People and places are guiding lights: The “Original Pantry, The Griffith Park Observatory, Pandora’s Box, Hollywood sign, Manson murder sight, Watts Tower, Randy’s Donuts and Dolores del Rio’s home: They are frames that live in my depository of archives: Accompanied by thousands more: The small and large transparency formats: The David Hockney, Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Gehry, Getty Villa and Center: They cozy up to my Pacific Coast canyons Hollywood canyons from highest peaks to Los Angeles’s ocean levels: Every enclave from one end of the city to another has been seen, but for what gain: China Town, Little Tokyo, Korea Town, Olvera Street remind me I have lived a never ending adventure: What was I seeking? Nothing more than a capture:

I feel the fire: Malibu County Line: Patricks’ Roadhouse down the road: Estrada Drive heads partially  north, east and west: Rustic Canyon cuts back north and west to Chautauqua: I came upon Temescal Canyon and Paradise Cove: I traced more miles to Calabasas, Mulholland Drive and  Cahuenga Pass:

I can be like a AAA map guide becoming lost at every bend in the river: How else can I trace my eyes’ heart: I travel to find myself lost and find my self discovered: The fires are non penetrate but the heat remains alive: The sorrow I feel for every last footprint amid the fires leaves me distraught with the what if’s: The digging into all of the land and lives lost makes me feel for the centuries never to be saved:

For a fleeting few seconds as I rode down Estrada I felt like  like William Wharton’s Birdy: My 1971 Moto Guzzi was a real dream: I imagined flight: My arms spread wide: My eyes caught Jack Nicholson joy dancing in the middle of Estrada: He was running across Estrada appearing part the Penguin, and part small time alcoholic lawyer from Easy Rider: He seemed sated with joy:

I chose not to fly further than here: I will always be sad about the January fires: James Baldwin wrote: ”people are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them”.