mahiwaga

When is the right time to write? It never seems the right time when the words come. Paper, pen, or even keyboard, touchscreen are never in reach when the words bubble up, unlooked for, unheralded. And before I can write them down, they evaporate, like a single cup of water spilled heedlessly upon the cracked, dry earth as the sun beats down mercilessly.

I woke up this morning to finish reading a tale of woman who turns into a dragon. I’ve read it several times before, but the story always haunts me. It was in this fey-inspired mood that I trudged off to work today with dread. Dreading what, I’m not certain.

Today is my mother’s birthday, so my brother and my sister decided to take her and my dad to Disneyland. When I finished up at 6 pm, they were still there, so I told them I would meet them at Downtown Disney.

I headed out staring at the brooding clouds of smoke billowing from the San Gabriel Mountains to the north. Yesterday, with the winds completely still, the smoke climbed straight up, looking like a stack of sullen thunder clouds. This morning, the smoke had diffused throughout the entire basin, filling the SGV, contaminating everything with taste of charred ash, of burning, of fire season in Southern California. Quickly I made a 180°, climbing up into the Puente Hills. The broad parkway narrows suddenly into a windy mountain road, and it’s easy to forget you’re still deep in the bowels of the vast conurbation known as Southern California. Cresting the hill, you can see downtown Santa Ana and the whole of the OC opening up before you.

I’ve always been obsessed with roads. I still see the ancient tracks crisscrossing the valleys and the basin, even thought they’ve been paved over and turned into Interstate highways. A lot of these roads were here before the Spaniards ever set foot on this distant land, coming together in a twisted knot in the Place of Smoke, Yang-na, the Tongvan village that eventually became Pueblo del Rio de Nuestra Señora la Reyna de los Angeles de Porciuncula. One of these roads the Spaniards eventually called the King’s Highway, El Camino Real, going up and down the Californian coast. That’s where the road out of the hills eventually intersects, that ancient track, miles inland. Before the Interstate Highway System bypassed it once and for all, it used to be the US 101. Now it’s only known as Whittier Boulevard, as it threads its way to Fullerton, and then swings south as Harbor Blvd. The road, buried under concrete, steel, and asphalt, heads all the way down to San Diego and into Baja California.

It also happens to pass by Disneyland. I took me about 45 minutes driving surface streets from the City of Industry to Anaheim, and I wound my way through the streets of the Magic Kingdom, where my memory fails me. There was a time in my life where my parents took me to this place every year, and now, none of it looks familiar. I met them in Downtown Disney, an ersatz urban center, the likes of which proliferate throughout all of Southern California (There’s Universal City Walk, The Grove, The Block at Orange, The Americana in Glendale, etc., etc.) The walkways were filled with throngs of people, and there were musicians performing in the plazas.

On my way back to my car I stopped and watched a group of musicians playing a cover of Muse’s “Starlight”, with a reggae feel to it. And then I drove off onto the I-5, heading back to the heart of the city, and I thought about the hundreds of times I’ve taken this freeway up from San Diego, and all the possibilities I never had the courage to explore. Time never waits. You’d think I’d know that by now.

Despite the raging brush fires and all the light pollution of Hollywood, you could still see the brightest stars glimmering in night sky, and the helicopters patrolling the city, flaring bright as they made their turns. The words really never come very easily. I have to scrape them from my brain, like the splattered droppings of an insane bird trapped in a cage much too small, and it’s only the rearranged remnants that end up written down. Well, I tried.