Why I Miss LA

by Mae, 24, Detroit

The City itself is interesting enough in its own right. Although known for its thick layer of smog enveloping the downtown like a shroud so suffocating that on sluggishly unclear days the buildings are indistinguishable through the toxins permeating the air, the city is strangely beautiful.

Sections of the downtown are clean, free of the refuse one would presume would litter the streets. Few transients linger about--during the day, at least--in most sections of the city. Culture of many sorts evidence themselves in the many districts of the town: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Italian, Vietnamese, Mexican, Afro-American, Pilipino.

Colours, tastes and faces. The downtown area, however clean and organized-looking in several districts, does not reflect the disarray of the rest of the city.

Suburbs sprawl for miles outside downtown, every direction. Freeways that crisscross communities like a noisy web cut into the hills dotted with dilapidated houses or affluent mansions. Some neighborhoods appear to have evolved as some afterthought. Cities and subcommunities sprout up random, disorganized, hodge-podge, ecclectic and sometimes cramped. Each is a good exampled of man's quelling of nature.

Man-made versus natural.
Built versus grown.
Inorganic and organic.
Pillar and tree.
Concrete and earth.

However, the city can never fully subdue nature. Although a living, breathing entity with a history, with a soul, with personality, the city can never hold the forces of nature at bay. Fences entangled with ivy can be seen everywhere, rust and green in a minuet of man and nature. Weeds inch and push up through the cracks in the pavement.

Even with man's need for aesthetic beauty, in his vanity, man has admitted to his incapability to stave off the insistence of nature. He must realise that, like this vast city, what will grow will continue to grow, no matter what has been set there to stop it.