This is going to be the quickest blog I've ever written, so please excuse any spelling or grammar mistakes or, worse yet, a general roughness of style. I'm just trying to get this down before I leave for Bible Study (at Shakeys! Whoo!). Here goes: I went home to walk Penny yesterday after work and ended up going on an "adventure"--at least that's what I kept saying to my dog as we walked down narrow streets where cars got thisclose! to us and the scenery was less than...hmmm, less than idyllic, I guess. Anyone familiar with the Mariana Apartments in East Los Angeles? They're these huge apartment buildings parallel to the train tracks that occupy entire blocks, and they're not very pretty but they're pretty affordable (I think), and so they're kind of a haven for the socio-economically challenged. I grew up just around the corner and up the hill from these apartments, but I never ventured there because my gramma told me it wasn't safe and I knew better than to try my luck against them. Them being the boys with the shaved heads and the baggy shorts; the girls with drawn-in eyebrows and too much eyeliner. But yesterday I was in the mood to walk, and my usual Cal-State Los Angeles route wasn't gonna work because there were just TOO many people on campus at that time and I didn't feel like I could handle all the eyes. So I decided to walk an alternate way and ended up right by the Mariana apartments. The first thing I noticed was the graffiti. Grafitti on buildings, trees, even sidewalks! Friggin sidewalks! I mean, come on! At least when I see it on freeway signs or the underside of bridges I'm somewhat impressed, asking myself how THE HECK they managed to tag there, and if they really have that kind of resourcefulness wouldn't it be AWESOME if that energy was channeled in a more productive (and not so ugly) way? Sigh. The graffiti was an eyesore. But then again so were the apartments themselves--just these big, greyish-white, homogenous squares, bland and bare and betraying the chaos around them and inside them. Even the giant signs beckoning to passerby with the word "POOL!" were an eyesore--but mostly they were contradictions, trying to make the unappealing appealing with their big, bold letters set against a blue background. A pool, really? THAT'S supposed to make me or some other person who wanders by want to rent? Maybe if they had a jacuzzi. Hmmm. I walked by and stared curiously at the windows facing the street, trying to see if I could perhaps get a glimpse of what these units contained inside. But mostly the blinds were drawn, so what that outer drabness concealed evaded me. I was, however, able to SMELL. An odd combination of grease and laundry detergent struck my nose when I was about mid-block--women mashing up beans, perhaps? And simultaneously washing a load of their son's children's dirty school clothes? Perhaps. And the sounds, of course! There were a lot, but mostly I heard the rap music emanating from the parked Honda across the street. And then there was the girl in the too-tight blouse who squealed delightedly when she got into the passenger seat of a blue SUV. Anyways, I walked further and rounded the corner and had to scoop up my dog into my arms because these two big German Shepherds barked and barked at her and she refused to walk further. And then I walked by all these teenagers in school uniforms and refused to meet their gaze because YES! high-school students still scare me! That was kind of my feeling throughout, I guess--not exactly fear, more like a vague uneasiness, a sense that all is NOT well in the world if people still live like that. Not that I was ever much better off up in hills--it's just that I was sheltered, taught differently, treated differently. So I grew up across the street from drug-dealing gangsters with psychotic tendencies but never saw, heard, or believed any of it. What I knew was school, books, the life movies and my dad told me I could have...But walking by those apartments, I began to wonder why. Why have I always thought of myself as so different from them (the people I grew up around), and why have I always believed that I should, that I CAN, leave everything I've known and pretend I've ALWAYS lived on tree-lined streets, I've ALWAYS liked hummus, ALWAYS drank Starbucks coffee and yada yada yada yada--ALWAYS done everything just like those frufru (spelling?) yuppies that are slowly taking over every part of Los Angeles except for the truly, truly ghetto ones? Sigh. I don't know. I just know that I rounded the corner and walked up the hill to my gramma's house, where it was warm and quiet and Penny finally stopped shaking. Home sweet home. For now, at least.