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.]