Move It On Over

Something rather unexpected happened a few days ago at the homestead. It looks as if I will be moving out of my place and into a new one in about a month, not so long after the time I expect this blog to reach 400 posts. The knowledge that I am not long for the apartment I sit in as I write this of course let me to reflect on the past two years here. I guess that's not very long to live in one place, but I managed to get a lot into that time. Most of what I have accomplished in LA has happened while I have lived here. My early, nascent days happened first at the hostel in Koreatown for a month and then at the split-level duplex in Highland Park for the following year, but North Hollywood is kind of where I've found my way out here.

I wasn't eager to move here. I had left Highland Park, where I was very happy, because of a crisis in whose making I had no part. The owners had been pocketing rent checks and not paying the mortgage without saying anything, so it was very interesting to come home to a foreclosure notice on the door one night. The owners had been paying the utilities, so we came to realize the lights could go off any time, and the bank informed us upon taking possession that they would not be charging rent but might decide to demand all back rent at any time. It seemed right to get out, and I took about the first thing I could off of Craigslist.

I didn't think I'd want to move in. It was a hot day when I looked at the place, and I was dripping sweat as I filled out an application. When I first met the landlady, she good-naturedly mimed the alleged crimes of OJ by way of helping me to remember the apartment was on Simpson Avenue. Nothing better surfaced, and I move in with some trepidation on another blistering hot day. In the early days after that, I experienced my first earthquake and walked the streets of the neighborhood aghast at its rundown appearance. I considered sometimes how long it might be before I could justify moving again. As weeks and months past, I began to get used to the place.

Really, I'm very fortunate I moved into the place. Thanks to the man whose ad I answered and into whose home I moved, I met almost every one of the many people I know here and wound up doing almost everything I've done. He coerced me into attending an improv class after I had declined several times. I went once, twice, a few times, and finally got hooked. From that I got into any number of projects and started to really attend church again on a regular basis. It's been really good for me.

The building itself is hard to love. It's an interesting place- old construction on the front end, newer construction on the back end as a result of subsequent expansion. There's a cramped courtyard filled with plants and the obvious consequences of having cats running all over the place. There's a tiny little pool I've only begun to use. There's poor infrastructure and a surrounding neighborhood that still sometimes makes me uneasy at night. I've gotten basically comfortable here, learning to exploit North Hollywood's strong points and make allowances for inconveniences in traveling.

Now I'll probably be walking away from that accrued knowledge. It seems likely that I'll be in an intermediary location before finding my next permanent residence. I hope to find something very central. Downtown would be ideal, or perhaps Hollywood- something in the core of the city. I prefer to stay in Los Angeles proper if I can. Wherever it is, provided it's not in the general area I'm now leaving, I'll have the exciting and sometimes aggravating experience of exploring, discovering and learning to live in a whole new neighborhood. I greatly anticipate the day that I take a set of keys, say goodbye to a new landlord and plop myself down in a chair with the realization that I'm home again.