fresh n juicy chunks of oyster :: RTW travel blog

From hippie capital, USA I have returned to Atkins capital, USA where the 'low-carb lifestyle' has been embraced by the fast-food industry, the media and the rich and famous.
But it is more than just a fashionable excuse for stuffing your face and damaging your heart, bones and liver: it is a philosophy that lives in perfect harmony with Los Angeles.
Much of LA is, in essence, a tomb and you can live under the assumption of being able to conserve the beautiful and the good life as though you had a giant jar of marmalade - there is but little change inside a near vacuum.
Therefore anyone who is anyone has their mausoleum here. Behind high walls and security systems you can live and die your life in peace and isolation and the rest of the world can become invisible when you wish it too. Clusters of such mausoleums can be found in the desirable neighbourhoods that cover an unusually large part of the city and are almost eponymous with wealth. There not a single person dares walk in the streets car-less; distances between any two points in LA are measured in multiples of twenty minute units - by car. One such unit away you will usually find another crypt of the modern world: the shopping mall. On your way there you are encased in your tank-like Hummer or huge SUV that protects you while on transit between your lairs. And it is only then that you are reminded of the other people who live in the same city and also clog its arteries: traffic jams are cripplingly endemic in LA.
But you have to learn to take the bad with the good.
In the early evening from the hills of Mulholland Drive the pollution and the day's dissipating heat cause the city lights in the Valley below to glimmer and vibrate as though it was a mirage: LA appears to you like a beautiful Hollywood dream of old.
And then change, the only constant in life, also becomes apparent and marmalade jars and perfect vacuums are exposed as fictions. We are like bodies floating through the natural, eternal flux of the universe. Resistance is irresponsible and ultimately futile. And it may result in a low-carb lifestyle.

[Contrary to all the doom and gloom recently it's been a good time in the USA. But maybe I have been trying to induce a natural low in myself so that Japan will be all the more exciting and I'm also facilitating its fucking with my head. Which hopefully it will do after tomorrow's long flight straight to Tokyo, Narita. There are only 9 weeks left until London will call me back again and my remaining itinerary is predictably looking crazy right now.
For photos evidencing how TV has been my loving companion here check out Album - USA 1.
I would also at this point like to apologise if I have upset any LA natives in this post. I have actually not seen much of LA due to lack of transportation but next time I promise to rent a car and visit Compton and Long Beach. And like in every city there are the good and the bad. I just chose to ramble about a bad because it's more fun that way.]

I would like to apologise for not posting for so long and neglecting this
blog but unfortunately there has been almost absolutely nothing
rivetingly interesting to write about.
And yes, I know that hasn't stopped me before and in fact I have tended
to write nothing about nothing a lot of the time anyway. But right now I'm taking
a break.
I am in Berkeley visiting friends to be precise. And it's strange because
Berkeley is pretty much where I started this whole trip-thing a long time
ago and it still looks the same. In the Bay Area life seems simpler and
still the sun shines every day in a cloudless sky. Graffiti on public
transport calls for 'destruction of car culture', crazy burnt-out hippies
lounge on street corners and everything feels kinda woolly-soft and
non-threatening.
Which is good because I now finally have all the energy I need
to make it to Japan -- ok, so it's not like I'm swimming but it's all in
the mind! Any time now -- I'm bracing myself for Sushi breakfast, lunch and dinner every day; paradise beckons.

I left Mexico after three more days of excellent partying and flew into the Land of the Free. I swiftly breezed through Los Angeles immigration - mindful that in a few months I too would be welcomed by the handshake of fingerprint-scanner and a mugshooting webcam - and stepped on a public transport bus. I felt as though I was still back in Mexico: almost every person who stepped on spoke Spanish: there were couples, mothers with children, grandparents and restaurant chefs coming home from work. I felt at home and wanted to tell them that I was in their boat, I was from South of the border too and I loved how they were preserving their culture here.
Instead I ended up involuntarily saying gracias and por favor everywhere, especially in restaurants. I have stopped now. I am used again to 'civilisation'.
One unfortunate side effect of 'civilisation' is that I again have constant access to television and news and I seem to have chosen the precise moment of when the shit is starting to hit the fan for this exposure. Possibly, unbeknownst to me, the shit has been steadily dripping into the fan all this time but irrespectively I currently find myself standing right underneath it.
It ain't pleasant there.
I punch the air in frustration as though I can spur on the media to fix the world.
Then I see a Bush-Cheney '04 election broadcast convincingly hammering home Kerry's 'weakness' to the American heartland, still shocked and in fear of 9/11.
I fear everything will stay the same or get worse very quickly.
I want to see the President stand up and shout with as much pathos as when going to war, "This is disgusting and I am deeply ashamed of what has happened in Iraq. I am so terribly sorry and wish I could take away the suffering that has been inflicted. It is the most important thing in the world to me right now to make sure this will never happen again." Then he could symbolically sack his Secretary of Defence, tear down Abu Ghraib and dismantle Guantanamo or at least allow independent observers in (I don't even want to begin to imagine what we would see if soldiers had digital cameras there).
Maybe some of the above would repair a little damage or at least demonstrate some goodwill to the world.
But I am afraid of the future. I am afraid of just how angry and furious the world and its people may be. I fear that the only gesture of goodwill that could repair anything would be a parade through Baghdad's streets of the stripped-naked and hooded GI perpetrators. I fear nothing will be repaired in a long, long time.
And then I started hoping in the people's anger. I started hoping that they will rise up wanting to make the world a better place.
But then I watched Fox News for ten minutes. I saw that there probably weren't enough people who are pissed off or worried about the world being pissed off. After a ten minute dose of Fox even I caught myself having stopped worrying.
Oh what a frightening world.
But the good news is that in Los Angeles you don't have to worry. The sun is shining reliably every day and the world's beautiful and famous are around you.
I have been staying with family here, eating well, relaxing and having fun: it is an easy life.
So exactly what right do I think I have to complain about the world and torture you all with my rants? None at all, indeed, but I think getting it off my chest helps in not letting the shit that's sprinkling down ruin my mood too badly. After all, I'm on holidays. So, apologies and thank you all for being my therapists.

[Click here for Albums Mexico 2 for pictures of the party and Album USA 1 - LA for pictures of not much yet.]