We flew into L.A. International Airport this morning, and the familiar view of the 405 freeway from the window of the airplane signaled a new phase in this venture. After nine long months in South America, it feels almost alien to be back in Los Angeles.
Is it meaningful irony or simple coincidence that tomorrow will be the seventh anniversary of 9/11, that fateful date that had such a profound impact on the idea of America?
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Either way, our mission to reimagine and rediscover America, all of America, is unchanged. We are the heirs to this old New World, and based on what I have learned and experienced in these last nine months, we are more than capacious enough to embrace visions of America as different as California and Argentina, Los Angeles and Buenos Aires, La Paz and La Jolla. It seems to me that there is a widespread sense our American narrative is far from complete, that it is very much in need of a rethinking that broadens our horizens and captures not only the vista of transcendent future possibilities, but the best of our ancient native wisdom with its sense of limits and balance.
For the next five years, starting from our official launch in early 2009, we will surely find a wild diversity of unique, unexpected and often contradictory answers to the question of what America is and is not. And that is as it should be in this beautiful, savage and boundless world called America.
At this moment, having retrieved my luggage and now trying to find ground transportation, what is most on my mind are the startling differences between Los Angeles and Buenos Aires. The human scale of Buenos Aires and the ironic intimacy of its sometimes frenzied streetscapes has been replaced by a maze of concrete overpasses and massive 10 lane freeways on a grey early autumn day. No cute little black and yellow taxis zipping up and down every side street, so I am reduced to using a shuttle to get back to my LA home in horrific traffic.
After getting home at midday and saying hello to Jessica, I retrieved my other cell phone and talked with a few friends and also received a few calls. I have told very few people that I was coming back, but Nancy and I connected with her offer to take me out for sushi tonight after I have a chance to rest a bit.
I noticed during a brief trip to the grocery store this afternoon that a woman named Sarah Palin has taken over the nation since I was last here. Her photo was on the cover of six (6) different magazines, one with a rifle, another with a Blackberry, a third holding a baby, etc.!
Was there an election while I was gone? Is Sarah Palin the new President? What happened to Hillary?
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The condition of the United States has declined so precipitously over the past seven or eight years that the entire nation, from the media establishment to the man or woman in the street, is nervously obsessed with this presidential election on one hand, while waiting anxiously for the inevitable collapse of the economy that everyone knows is coming on the other hand. It isn't a matter of "if". It is a matter of "when"? And how deep?
Nancy and I got together about 7 pm. She took me to a great sushi joint in Hollywood in her two seater Mercedes. The sushi was extraordinary. We had been to this same restaurant just before I left Los Angeles last year. It looks like a hole in the wall in a Hollywood strip mall, but it is perhaps the best sushi I have had in Los Angeles.
We ran into three of Nancy's friends on the way into the restaurant, but we sat at separate tables. After 90 minutes of me talking too much about my adventures in South America, we had to walk past Nancy's friends at their table on the way out of the restaurant. They graciously insisted that we join them for a night cap, and we ended up in a lively conversation about politics and movies for another hour.
The woman in the trio was named Donanne, and we clicked immediately. She had just been to Chile for two weeks for her brother's wedding to a Chilean woman and loved it. She loved the pace of life, the beauty of the land and the intellectual sophistication she had encountered, perhaps unexpectedly, among Chileans.
After an intense conversation about the election and the strange phenomenon that is Sarah Palin, Donanne asked what I had been doing in South America. She loved Pan American Dreams and was captivated by our central question - What is America?
We brainstormed together until it was time to leave the restaurant and agreed to get together later in the week for coffee. I think Donanne will be very helpful with the project, and this was certainly a nice way to start again in L.A.
