Story: The Los Angeles Sky

Los Angeles is brimming with earth bound stars, but if you look to the night sky, only a few celestial beings are powerful enough poke their way through the city's bright aura. No, the night sky holds no special place here - that distinction is reserved for places more isolated, more remote. The bold blue of the Los Angeles sky permeates most waking hours, but the sunsets - the resounding announcement of day's end - they are truly spectacular.

I have a friend named Lorrie who does her best to appreciate everything, life in all it's forms. It was Lorrie who first got me thinking about the sunsets here, the co-mingling of beauty and toxicity. She was wrapping up a business trip in Los Angeles and I volunteered to give her a ride to the airport. On our way, stuck in traffic of course, I proffered a complaint about the smog. "Yes," she replied. "It is a problem. But it creates the most beautiful sunsets." As if on cue, the sun dipped to the horizon and the sky was filled with a panoply of colored light: orange, gold, yellow, a royal purple, a royal blue, silver, and a crimson red all vied for attention. It was glorious. "See," Lorrie said. "There is beauty in everything."

I do agree that there is beauty in everything, from the obvious to the hidden, the rose to the rock, the palace to the ghetto. I guess I believe in the gray area, the spaces between the black and the white, where a toxic substance such as smog can help to orchestrate the elements of a masterful sunset. Perhaps it is in my nature as a human being to accept, to venerate even, a poison. Is the poison not the power of so many of our substances here on earth? From wine to gasoline, a snake's venom to a despot's vitriol, an atom split. They all contain power, they all contain poison - each one a seducer in it's own right.

Perhaps that is why I love Los Angeles, the city I call home. There is great beauty here and there is also the promise of great power. Sometimes I sit alone at the top of a trail in Griffith Park, looking out at the vast throbbing basin that is the City of Angels. From this vantage point I can actually feel it, the ethereal it - the vibratory hum of human life and death and potential and disaster and love and sadness. It all coexists, just like the beauty and toxicity of my sunsets.

So if you come to Los Angeles, remember to look for the moment when the light begins to fade. The sun will stretch her fingers to the west, and when she dips to the horizon, watch as the sky fills with the glory of nature. Sure, it may be smoggy but remember - there is beauty in everything!