Marta ~ May 1

 

I did not like it at the time. I was very unhappy there. I hated the air, the way it was never really clear, always thick with smog and sun slanting with headache knives. And all those damn cars and no sidewalks. These were the worst things. 

 

Of course, in the very beginning, after driving across the country for a month and being 20 and, without registering it, being "on my own" for the first time it was novel to live in a place with palm trees anywhere and spiky birds of paradise in the supermarket parking lot. And everyone, really everyone,  in the movie business even if only on its most distant reaches. 

 

Not that I was there for the movies. I wasn't a movie -- excuse me, film -- person. Not the way some of the boys I knew were where you knew every director and thought some black-and-white western a masterpiece. But still, one kind of got drawn in. I went out and got my usual secretary job with what billed itself as a literary agency. All well and good so far, but the writers all wrote for TV -- except for one or two top tier people who did whole movies -- and their names were on the screen in the evening though I watched only because the person I was with watched and I hadn't eked out my own self yet. Not to that extent anyway. My own self was there, but mostly I was trying to tuck it out of sight so I could fit in with something that felt so vital I couldn't bear the thought of being without it. 

 

So when William Saroyan mentioned Hollywood this morning I was instantly back there, in a real place with a real atmosphere. Though I didn't like it at the time, I am glad I know very well what Hollywood is.