KAREEM TAYYAR 

Los Angeles Requiem         

1. It feels like there isn't a freeway overpass in the entire city without a tent encampment beneath it. 

2. Shopping carts. Frayed blankets. Blue tarps. Black umbrellas. A wedding dress draped upon a three-legged card table. Sleeping dogs. Dodgers flags. Hospital crutches. Transistor radios. A shoeshine kit. Spray-paint. Empty soda cans. Empty beer cans. Empty soup cans. Handwritten signs: Will Work for Food. Anything Helps. Hard Times. Three Kids. Jesus Saves. God Bless. 

3. Jasmine blooming off Vermont Street. My companion takes two handfuls and breathes in. "In Tarot, this is the flower of pleasure and beauty," she says. "I didn't know you read Tarot," I say. She takes my palm, opens it. "I read everything," she says, then smiles. 

4. In the Poetry Section of Skylight Books, Franny, the store's twelve-year-old cat, helps me locate Edward Hirsch's new collection. "I loved Gabriel," she purrs. "For the Sleepwalkers too." I open the book to a random page, and read, "We felt something lonely moving amongst us, a current almost, a small gust of wind." 

5. A young woman in a paisley mask leans against the shuttered facade of a Koreatown restaurant. She pulls a cigarette from beneath her long hair the way a magician might a white bird, or red scarf. She doesn't light it, but studies its surface as if it were an ancient tablet in need of translation. 

6. In traffic on the 110 freeway, headed downtown. The Clippers game is on AM radio. The team's best player is less than a week away from tearing up his knee, torpedoing their chances to advance to the next round of the playoffs. If God is a sports fan, it's the God of the Old Testament, the one who punished Lot's wife for her empathy, and Job for his devotion. 

7. I never cared for that God. I still don't. 

8. Friends and I sit on the rooftop of the Ace Hotel, several floors up from the United Artists Theater, an old movie palace built for the studio formed by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith. It only takes a few sips of wine for me to feel like a leading man and to believe the entire city is my white horse. 

9. Exiting the 101 at Coldwater Canyon, a middle-aged man wearing a Lakers cap sells me a bag of oranges. A crucifix dangles from his necklace. His mask has the twenty-third Psalm printed in small white letters across its front. He says something that sounds either like "One Love" or "Hot Stove" after I hand him his money, but because his voice is muffled by the cloth, I can't be sure. It was probably "One Love." I am certain it was "One Love." Bob Marley is still big in Los Angeles. 

10. The shuttered Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. The shuttered ArcLight on Colorado. The shuttered Orpheum at 9th and Broadway, where Sally Rand used to send men swooning with her white fan, bare butt, and bubble dance set to Debussy's "Claire de Lune." 

11. Billboards rise like rectangular spaceships all over West Hollywood: Go Lakers. Go Dodgers. Gay Pride. Vote Newsom. Mask Up. Avengers Assemble. 

12. Things not seen anywhere in the city: Rams or Chargers billboards. Rams or Chargers hats. Rams or Chargers t-shirts. Rams or Chargers flags in the windows of stores. 

13. Anyone who thinks Los Angeles is a football city has never been here or only just arrived here. 

14. Total cost to build SoFi Stadium where the Rams and Chargers began playing in 2020: $5 billion. 

15. Idling at a red light on Jefferson Boulevard, the Shrine Auditorium to my left. Memories of Mavis Staples calling up the ghosts of Civil Rights on "Freedom Highway." Memories of David Byrne calling up the ghosts of Talking Heads on "Once in a Lifetime." Memories of Bob Dylan calling up the ghost of Frank Sinatra on "Autumn Leaves." 

16. Speaking of ghosts. 

17. I see my grandfather, now eight years gone, working a survey crew out in front of Union Station. 

18. I see my grandmother, now three years gone, exiting St. Ignatius Church in Highland Park. 

19. I see John Wayne riding a brown horse through high grass in Griffith Park. 

20. Or is that Gary Cooper? 

21. Anyway, by the time the sun sets on Sunday evening every police siren sounds like a church bell, every train whistle like a muezzin's call. 

22. I'd fall to my knees in prayer, but I'm still stuck behind the wheel of my car in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 101.

 

 

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