Los Angeles Skyline Painting

To say I love Los Angeles is to say I love its shadows and nightlights, its meandering streets, the stretch of sunset-colored beaches. It’s to say I love the squawking wild parrots, the palm trees that fail to topple in robust winds, that within a half hour of L.A.’s center you can cavort in snow, deserts, mountains, beaches. This is a multi-layered city, unceremoniously built on hills, valleys, ravines. Flying into Burbank airport in the day, you observe gradations of trees and earth. A “city” seems to be an afterthought, skyscrapers popping up from the greenery, guarded by the mighty San Gabriels. Layers of history reach deep, run red, scarring the soul of the city, a land where Chinese were lynched, Mexican resistance fighters hounded, workers and immigrants exploited, Japanese removed to concentration camps, blacks forced from farmlands in the South, then segregated, diminished. Here also are blessed native lands, where first peoples like the Tataviam and Tongva bonded with nature’s gifts; people of peace, deep stature, loving hands. Yet for all my love I also abhor the “poison” time, starting with Spanish settlers, the Missions, where 80 percent of natives who lived and worked in them died, to the ruthless murder of Indians during and after the Gold Rush, the worst slaughter of tribes in the country. From all manner of uprisings, a city of acceptance began to emerge. This is “riot city” after all— more civil disturbances in Los Angeles in the past hundred years than any other city.