The moon over Miami must be a different one, because if it was the same I would swear it was playing favorites. It's almost within reach, regardless of where you stand. At the beach, its dust falls into the ocean and onto your face. Out in front of my parents' house, it hangs like a party light moving with the correct time. She hovers over like a doting mother, sometimes smiling gently through a curtain of clouds, and other times watching sternly, lighting the rest of the sky.
In Los Angeles she is a mysterious muse, always distant, always hiding behind obstacles. Clearly she prefers Miami, I think, but before I rush to judgement, I must be ready to assume that she is a mother to us all, and her role changes with location. I don't know that people in Southern Florida look to her as much as I do, but I digress. She belongs to us all.
She just may have raised her Miami children differently. I wouldn't know for sure because I don't live there, but I think I can say that most of the natives there are comfortable with themselves. They dress for comfort, they spend time with their families, and they don't place a great emphasis on building one mall, movie theater, or discount warehouse store for every 200 people. They dream of the lottery like we do, but I don't know that anyone dreams of moving to Miami for fame and fortune...okay, outside of a minority of people in Cuba.
In Los Angeles, the moon's mountainous brothers have set the precedent. Look up and see something taller, stronger, more accomplished. This inspires many to build higher, to climb to the top and see everyone from a distance. The height of wealth, of accomplishment, of earning awards and a bigger house or faster car is the new glory for an Angelite, and those cold, dark mountains watch on with pride.
Do you have to drive to a Starbucks? Don't worry. We'll build a closer one. Within a two block radius of where I work, you can find a regular Starbucks, one in a mall, another in a hotel, one at a gas station, and yet another one in a bookstore. Soon there will be three Target stores within five minutes of the same radius, to complement the two I know of on the East side of the Valley. Don't get me started on McDonalds or the traffic on the Ventura freeway.
Even though I'm here in the mix, entertaining all of those options, I do also feel like there is in this city a concentrated atmosphere of overwhelming competition and lack of value in the individual. In L.A. you have to be comfortable with yourself as a survival response; Unless you've achieved, bought, built, stood out, or most importantly, won, you will slip by entirely unnoticed.
It's exactly how the mountains have dictated it. It's all uneven ground. They've forced us to build roads around, over, and through them, and our vision becomes narrowed to the point where we can only focus on where we have to go, how we can get there, and what we can buy on the way. We don't notice the person next to us, we try never to establish eye contact with a stranger, and the well of encouragement or acknowledgement for small steps is running...wait, it's damp and...no, it's dry. Where would I have found that kind of love in L.A.?
I know why the moon is so close to the treetops in Miami. That's where my family is. The distant moon over my home here in the Valley is my connection to them, and the very reason I go there in my mind to hide, to heal and keep parts of me safe. As much as I've doubted whether or not I should be here in Los Angeles, I know that my family wants me to be here, to be everything they know I can be.
Now that I've stopped to call this "home", where do I begin?
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