Home is Beautiful by Cordelia Perez

No one ever told me that home was beautiful, that I should smile at palm tree silhouettes and Brentwood baby strollers.

So, I never did.

Until one day I decided that if I could love the way the street smells when clouds run their fingers over asphalt then I could love the rest of LA too.

Hungry for adventure and meaning, I took in neon signs and cigarette soot.

I lay flat in the sand, skin sticky with salt and pollution, and I looked up to see postcard blue, glanced at gulls and floating diapers, left to a an endless princess chain of palm trees and short,-happy hotels.

Bros on bikes, caramel girls on foot. I saw beauty in old faces whose implants and injections defied the gravity of time.

I watched as young agents hiding Midwestern accents under high quality hair gel and thick cloth paper business cards revealed themselves to be Lost Boys in pursuit of youth and adventure.

It used to smell faintly of quaint but misplaced optimism. "Los Angeles." What fool -- what happy fool - could hold such high hopes for a city?

What, with pills and effervescent booze and organic babies, we can't all be angels.

Though, this thought begs the question:

What on Earth could possibly be more divine than an entire city built upon broken wings and broken dreams?

A city than in itself is a living organism that thrives on optimism, the understanding that tomorrow has to be better because weather this lovely can't go wasted, and people this intent can't suffer too much.

A living organizm that feeds stoned teenagers soft warm tacos and small childrean handfuls of sand and mouthfuls of swishy sea water.

I came to learn, in not too much time, for the idea had been within me all along, merely waiting for permission and sufficient evidence to blossom into fruition, that even what appears to be a foolishly named life form is given such a name for a reason.

Often a first name indicative of some species and a second name for some discoverer, scientist, or characteristic of the thing made apparent.

Divinity, it seems lives in looking at home through the right rose-colored glasses, a looking at home that allows soft cartilaginous wings to hide underneath every power-suit and worn cotton dress.