Yesterday I saw a semi driving through a river. It was the strangest thing I have ever seen. I should specify that the river was the LA river, which is mostly a giant wash. Nonetheless, who drives trucks in a wash?
That sight was a hard one to miss, especially because of the steadily crescendoing woosh as the truck approached. But I was already walking with my eyes open that morning because of the unsuspecting beauty along the river. The bike path that sits at the top of the northern side of the wash, excuse me–river, abuts the backyards of many Culver City homes. Usually their property lines are hidden by cascading bushels of bougenvilla, oleander, and some flower that looks like honey-suckle. But every once in awhile someone’s well-cultivated peppers, beans, tomatoes, and fruit would hang like a rainbow in their backyard gardens.
At the Duquesne entrance to the bike path, the river smells like the ocean. The seagulls know it; they all feed and sunbathe alongside the slimy, green water. Occasionally other birds mingle with them, my favorite being a miniature version of a stork. Along this same stretch, some art students had created a vivid mosaic mural of the different rivers of the world as if to entice the passerby into this secret water-side passage.
Coming home, I reversed my path and saw the parking lots across the river and the graffiti on the walls of the wash. Several sketchy teenagers loitered with their backpacks in ominous clumps. I walked by the same gardens, flowers, oceanic scent pockets, and murals, and yet I didn’t even notice them. The defeated thoughts in my head must have veered my eyes towards the ugly sights along the river.
Isn’t that just like life?
