One
Day This Will All Make Sense
Excerpt from novel written by Katie Jansson Shahin
Excerpt from novel written by Katie Jansson Shahin
Not
one day had passed since I had moved to LA two and half years earlier when I
wasn’t grateful and aware of what city I was in. Not one morning had passed
that I had driven to work, which was usually around six forty-five a.m., when
my mind hadn’t gone completely quiet and at ease at the sight of Vine Street,
coming off of the 101 South. I knew I was fortunate. Many young people in
Sweden dreamed of moving to LA and tried so hard to find ways to stay once they
made it here on a student visa. For the most part, people either got married or
never found a way to stay. I, on the other hand, had been lucky. My dad had
moved to the US almost twenty years earlier and since he’d become a naturalized
citizen before I turned twenty-one, I had gotten a green card through him. I
continued down Vine Street and saw the W Hotel sign up in the sky, and a few
blocks farther down I passed the bright red building that housed The Redbury
hotel, with the world famous Capitol Records Building on my right side.
As I
got on to the 101 North, driving ten miles an hour in Friday traffic, I
wondered to myself what it was about LA that had me so wrapped around its
finger. The first time I fell in love with California was when I watched The
O.C. Shortly thereafter my dad moved to Orange County from Wisconsin, and I
was able to go visit the place I had only seen on TV. Of course, the entire
show was filmed in LA, but I didn’t know that back then. I then discovered the
show Entourage, and that’s when real things started to happen inside me.
I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. Was it the beautiful weather and the
smell of freshly-cut grass all year round? Was it the wide streets you could
barely cross in time before the streetlight turned red for the pedestrians
again? Was it the buildings that on the outside looked like nothing more than a
chunk of cement, but on the inside were beautifully decorated lounges? Was it
the powerful rush I had gotten the first time I went ninety on the empty
freeway at three a.m.? Or was it simply the fact that I knew I was in the same
city where all the Hollywood movies came from?
While
I saw all the beauty that LA had to offer, I wasn’t oblivious to all the things
that other people usually saw as the downside of moving to LA: the constant
sound of traffic and honking; the fuel-filled air and the fog; the enormous
city where everything was separated by insane distances; the huge freeways; the
above-ground electrical lines; the cracks in the pavement left by earthquakes.
I saw all those things too. But my love for this city was an unconditional kind
of love—I didn’t love LA despite its flaws. I loved it even more for
them. We could be flawed together.
