Greetings from LA LA Land

Posted by adam on Sep 8, 2009 in Blog | 3 comments

Well, technically I’m in West LA. I’m two blocks from the Santa Monica line. So I guess that makes me a poser. And I didn’t even come up with the title of this post: I owe the dubbing of my new home as “LA LA Land” to my good friend and colleague Ron Vish.

After our long haul across the country–driving from Boston, to Baltimore, to Columbus, to Missouri, to Kansas, to Denver, to Utah, to the Grand Canyon, to Fullerton, to Santa Monica–we’re finally settling into our new place, and we love it so far. We’re withing biking distance of UCLA (my wife’s new grad school), the beach, and within walking distance of almost everything else we need. The weather is great, and we’re happy as can be. The trip got me thinking.

It’s amazing how moving to a new place provides such a strong sense of “newness”, even though the biggest “new” thing in life is a new address, and a new place to send the rent check! Even though I’m continuing to do the same things that I did in Boston, the spirit-lift that occurs is something far more substantial than the lifestyle change itself.

My guess is that this would be tied to our evolutionary tendency to be nomadic hunter/gatherers. Each season brings a new place to live, and a renewed excitement about life. I suppose also that as sedentary people today, we cope with the loss of variety in life by marking the seasons with major holidays, each to commemorate the change.

This substitution works to an extent, but not nearly so much as an actual relocation. I suppose that the “rules” about attire in different seasons (i.e. women aren’t supposed to wear white shoes before labor day, etc) are also related to the idea that each season brings a new beginning.

Our post-modern insistence that these rules are arcane and petty may seem heroically modern to some, but in my eyes it also steals something from life. Now that we no longer eat seasonal foods (Whole Foods has peaches 365 days of the year), no longer dress seasonally aside from the functional change to account for weather, no longer have work days that change with the season; we really have no connection with the revolving changes that mark the passage of time.

I guess it’s a moot point here in SoCal, though. Sure, locals believe there are “seasons” here, but coming from Boston, let me just say that “winter” in LA is not “Winter” in any sense of the word. So I suppose that musings about seasonality are now officially past-due, now that I’m living in a season-free zone.