Gustavo is seriously too kind in this post at Navel Gazing at our sister paper OC Weekly but I can't say I'm not pleased and flattered with his announcement that I'm leaving L.A. for a little bit, a year, maybe more, for Mexico City. I'm sealing a deal with editor Colin Robinson at Scribner to write a book about the underground, basically -- youth and subcultures. I'm gonna do a lot of writing, a lot of reading, a lot of drinking and eating, and a lot of walking. My boots are my best friends. Participation does a body good.
Let me tell you about my feelings right now, since this is one of those things blogs can be good for. I feel blessed, elated, lucky, grateful, and also sad and nervous. I love Los Angeles. Every single day it manages to surprise me, to make me gasp. So much collides and gets mixed up here. The single-passenger automobile is ridiculous and offensive -- and that makes it amazing! The landscape, it tosses and turns, so lush and extreme. No two buildings are the same. This city is so shifty and creepy and deceptive. It's sexy. I'll miss it. I'm going to miss my family of friends and my editors and colleagues. I'll miss my relatives in San Diego and Tijuana and elsewheres.
That said, I'll definitely be back.
I want to thank the people I've learned from, the people who've encouraged me, the people who've challenged me. I want to thank Laurie Ochoa for letting me go to Mexico City last year to cover the presidential election for the Weekly, and my editor Tom Christie, and Alan Mittelstaedt for hiring me, and Marc Cooper for being the first person to meet me and tell me about the Weekly. I want to thank the folks at the L.A. Times who nurtured me early on. I want to thank my agent Katherine Fausset at Curtis Brown. And her brother Richard, my homeboy from the L.A. Times, currently holding it down in the ATL, for putting me in touch with her.
I don't know what I'm going to do with Intersections. Once I get there I might scale back on posts, maybe down to once a week, to concentrate on my manuscript. Haven't decided this. Head is spinning with the physical, mental, and emotional components of relocation. Alright, L.A., I'm out! Stay grimy! Thank you!!
* See sights of D.F. architecture, as seen above, in so-good photoblog Parella.