Overwhelmed

Sometimes, this city overwhelms me. It isn't always in a bad way, and really, the good ways that it overwhelms me are what got me thinking about this entry, but I do think it's worth noting that my extremes in moods are quite often linked to this city.

Let me begin by telling a story about Los Angeles.

I lived in Los Angeles for about eighteen months. The part of LA where we lived was actually Burbank, which is home to lots of movie studios and unbearable temperatures. Burbank is in the Valley, which is the San Fernando Valley, home to Valley Girls and the adult film industry. I'm not making that up; Boogie Nights was based on an area about ten miles from our house, and every Tuesday night, the bar down the street from us hosted Porn Star Karaoke, which is precisely what it sounds like it is. (Since you are now wondering, porn stars are excellent at karaoke.)

If you've ever visited Southern California, you know that it is home to two colors, brown and smog-brown. Brown is the color of the mountains and vegetation, and smog-brown is the color of the cloud that hangs over the city any time there is daylight.

Los Angeles is also home to two major weather conditions, which are 'hot' and 'unbearably freaking hot.' In the Valley, the temperature would easily top triple digits in August. In fact, I distinctly remember searching for over an hour for a parking space at Santa Monica beach on Labor Day, because it was only 98 degrees on the shore, and that felt chilly compared to the 117 in Burbank.

There is, however, a minor weather condition, typically seen only from mid-January through February, and this is 'torrential downpour.' Basically, once we were so exhausted with sunlight, the sky decided to spend thirty days dumping water on us, causing all sorts of traffic accidents and flooding conditions, and a leak in the closet that held our hot water tank. And then in March...

We went to San Francisco for a weekend, just to get the hell out of LA, and suddenly, the hillsides... they were green. I'm not just talking like, mildly green, I'm speaking new-birth-of-the-forest freaking Fern Gully green. And there were wildflowers! The hills were covered with little dots of yellow that just coated the side of the road. We were driving up the 5, and I remember thinking, "Holy Jesus, this isn't Los Angeles! What the hell? Has the city finally come to life?" The brown hills were green, the yellowish mountains were green, the wildflowers were everywhere, and on that day, the world was full of promise.

This lasted about a week, and when we drove up the same route to Sonoma for the film festival in the beginning of April, the hills were brown again. The sun had returned and scorched it all, and all I had were the photos we'd taken to prove that LA really had another color stored away somewhere.

That weekend in Sonoma, I made a solomn vow that I was going to get the hell off the West Coast and back to Pittsburgh where I belonged.

The thing about Pittsburgh is that the feeling that the world is alive is what keeps me going. Yes, there are depressing things around every bend, if you're looking. The Pens lost Game 6 to the Canadiens last night, when we really should have won, but as I was rushing home to catch the third period, I passed over the Hot Metal Bridge, and the lights of the city reflected off of the Monongahela, and for one minute, I couldn't worry about the outcome of the game. I knew there was a chance we weren't going to pull through and win it, but I also knew, in that moment, that in a city as beautiful as ours, there was always going to be another chance.

In autumn, the trees here cover such a wide expanse of colors, and the sky in October is just so very, very blue, and the sight from the top of the hill where I live of the Steel Building peeking up over the trees from downtown is just unmatchable. And in winter, that quiet stillness after a huge snowfall, when the trees are hanging low, bare branches outlined in white... it just makes me feel warm.

So maybe it's the fact that I had to live through the shades of brown in Los Angeles that lets me get so overwhelmed with this city's beauty. I'll take it. I don't regret the fact that we spent so much time and money and heart getting beat down on the West Coast, if the trade-off is that I can appreciate this little city so much more fully. This is our first spring in this house, and I have been watching the green burst out on the trees, watched the blossoms erupt pink and then fade into emerald. The Steel Building towers over green now, a million different gorgeous shades, and I just feel overwhelmed - overwhelmed in a good way, struck with the fact that maybe life is, after all, full of possibility and promise.

If I could give this city a hug, I would do it. If I could wrap my arms around Pittsburgh, even on a rainy day, even on the day after a Pens loss, I would do it. In fact, maybe right now is the moment that this city needs a hug. Last night, when I was feeling down, the city lights lifted me up, and if I could tell this city just how much I love it, maybe tomorrow, the sun will shine again and the Pens will bring home a win.

Really, in this city, I think it's quite possible. :)