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sunshine jen: Time Stops
On Saturday night, I made a series of wrong turns and found myself lost near Dodger Stadium around midnight. Fortunately, the game that night had gone extra innings, so I was surrounded by cars all going twenty miles per hour---which is not such a bad thing with the price of gas at $4.50 out here.
By the way, I don’t think I was the only one lost at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers can’t seem to find it in themselves to play 500 ball, but no, I’m not whining. It would be nice if the Dodgers won more. They might even squeeze into the playoffs---when they would be stomped on by better teams---but that’s just projecting into the future.
Cruising around Dodger Stadium, I reflected on time in Los Angeles. Time does stop out here---or maybe it just slows down. Have I really been out here almost six years? Where did all the time go and what did I really do in it?
Because there are no cold winters, there are no spring reawakenings and no brisk autumns when one braces for the cold that is to come. There are just days and days of seventy-two degrees. Occasionally, it rains. Weathermen on TV out here really work hard to make their forecasts interesting.
With no seasons, aging seems to slow down. As long as I don’t bake too long in the sun, the lines on my face aren’t growing too much. I wonder if this lack of aging also translates into a lack of maturity. Am I stuck in the age I was when I came out here?
I heard that if someone goes to prison, they come out at the maturity level they were when they went in. If you go in at twenty and come out at forty, you’re still twenty on the inside. I don’t know. It was a theory told to me by an ex-con. Is Los Angeles a prison? Los Angeles is a sprawl. Does my mind make Los Angeles a prison? And why do I have bad dreams?
As I was finding myself in a moment of Hamlet-esque angst while lost at Dodger Stadium, I spotted a sign for a freeway. It was not the freeway I needed, but it was the freeway that would get me to the freeway I needed. Ah-hah! I did actually loudly say Ah-hah! I was even in the correct lane. I went up to thirty-five and got on the onramp.
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