Any Port In A Storm

Some two months ago, my roommate and I parted ways, he moving into an apartment closer to work by himself, and me then moving in with another friend elsewhere. I gather my former roommate has been quite content with his lot, and I can't complain too badly myself, but stability has not been my bag of late. The place I moved into then was temporary, and I am now easing out of there not into the permanent place as I hoped but into an even more temporary situation. That permanent place is for sure and I will have something to say about that, but today I contemplate the here and now. I've been going from one pop culture reference to another in an effort to adequately describe the nature of my recent living situation. I thought of Bruce Banner in 'The Incredible Hulk', Caine in 'Kung Fu', and Richard Kimble in 'The Fugitive'. All men on the move, constantly helping others in each new place, but never able to end their travails and settle down to find some peace.

I suppose it's not really so dramatic. Since I've come to LA, I was in a hostel for a month before living in my first real place for a year. I left there to live in the next place for two years, and now have moved for the second time in the last two months. I hadn't enough time to fully figure out the place I was just in, so there's little hope I'll be able to do that here in some ten days, but it's interesting anyway to make even a cursory examination of this place and neighborhood I'm in now. I haven't since college in Chicago lived in or near a city center, and while one could argue that downtown Burbank isn't exactly Downtown in the context of the greater metropolitan Los Angeles, it's a downtown. Just blocks south, there's a tremendous amount going on. Downtown Glendale could be a modestly-sized city center anywhere in the country, but Burbank's is slightly more reflective of the region. There are plenty of nice retail operations and restaurants. It seems to me the grocery stores are a bit distant for my liking, but one is an upscale one, so that's a reasonable trade-off. The library is pretty close, so that balances things out fairly nicely.

It's difficult to comment on the arrangement inside the apartment, as things haven't developed a great deal and won't. I have a private bedroom again, which is nice. Perhaps better still is the excellent Internet access I have missed so. Pleasant is the cable I have to watch for the moment, but I must not falter in my effort to divest myself from it emotionally. It remains best that I don't make its return a permanent one. The bathroom is shared not just with a bathroom but with a cat whose presence may or may not draw out longer. I like the cat. I've never identified as a cat person, but I know that my opposition is really on a case by case basis. There's a lot in cats that I admire, the necessity of winning respect from something I have to pay for notwithstanding. Dogs give it up far more readily, but I concede it's worth slightly less as a result.

I'm really very fortunate that in this flurry of activity, I never have been at serious risk of vagrancy. I'm blessed by good friends with a keen sense of practicality. It's not great to have to alight here for a split second in the grand scheme of things, but things could have played in a much worse way. There's fun near enough, and the immediate area is a peaceful one several notches above the gritty ones I've known in the past. I'm blessed with gracious, generous friends with a keen sense of practicality, and these particular ones make for a wonderful home situation, although schedules are such that all do not seem to be present simultaneously all that frequently. As assiduously as I worked to not get attached to the place I was just in, I must redouble my efforts here.