The river.
There’s too much to say about this latest trip. As Hesse put it in Siddhartha: “The river is everywhere.” Brad Garrett and I are talking about co-authoring a book about ten of our riparian adventures, so I may get a few solid thoughts down on paper at some point. For now, though, my mind is kaleidoscoping with infrastructure details (ingresses, especially; always ingresses), geometries, geographies, building materials, fleeting impressions…
Stevie Nicks singing, “When the rain washes you clean you’ll know, you’ll know…” as I drove into the city. Jumping a locked gate in the pre-dawn hush at the source of the river — and then every other barrier we encountered before hitting Universal City security. Fake trees disguising telco infrastructure: palm, pine, and eucalyptus. Climbing a stone wall to get a better look at Starfleet Academy. An empty parking lot beneath which 18 nuclear missiles were siloed until quite recently. Drinking whiskeys old enough to legally drink themselves. Will Self’s unexpected cameo at the Ace Hotel before a tray of room service champagne and our addled realization that all the records we liked best we had played at the wrong speed. Being guided through the ephemera of Bowtie Parcel by local artists with a powerfully strong sense of place. Buckaroo Bonzai’s logo on a warehouse (which makes sense, given that we started at the Starbucks of Rocketdyne – one of Pynchon’s Yoyodyne models). The privilege of observing nature with a scientist whose mind moves at 200 mph (and who continuously, non-confrontationally challenged suppositions with small thought experiments). Deb Chachra explaining emotional labor to me as we peed around the walls of a locked public restroom in a park. Being told by an Uber driver we looked like bank robbers (whether it was emotional labor or not). Dawn on the rooftop of an abandoned building in Downey. Anarchist infrastructure historian Adam Rothstein’s heavily annotated Thomas Guide, his impeccable route finding, a perfectly timed Benjamin quip, and his savage sentences re: Griffith J. Griffith (from a book-length project on California water he’s been working on). A mysterious government pickup truck, laden with chopped wood, driving at speed through the river. Bridge graff of a shadow coyote pack annotated: “Fuck the other side.” A guy in bright red leathers popping a wheelie on his motorcycle, tearing hell down the bike path toward Long Beach. A guy who had lashed his gear and himself into the girders beneath a bridge with a web of cables. A guy in an electric wheelchair who drove against traffic with three leashed pugs mushing ahead of him, blasting a tiny radio, then hopping up to walk into the liquor store. An old guy with a wispy Fu Manchu, ponytail, and sailor’s cap who shouted, “Close that FUCKING door!” at us, then went back to contemplating his horchata, statue-like. The peregrine falcon that shot out at me from the bushes. The corkscrew staircase between I-5 and the 110 at the confluence of Arroyo Seco and the river. A decapitated Mickey Mouse, its body twisted at the bottom of a cliff, as downtown LA came into clear view. Going garbage Tarzan on trash island. Swinging on the Tree of Woe in a pasture behind Disney’s animation studio. Talk of indigenous lizard people. Horse favelas. All of the amazing readings en route — but especially when a flock of pigeons circled overhead, ominously, as London-based geographer Harriet Hawkins read via Skype from and about Lewis MacAdams; and how Lucy Lippard’s Undermining on the subject of Spiral Jetty dissolved into whorls of razor wire separating Compton from the river. Brad recovering his balance after slipping on bird shit in a no-fall situation. The swaying, rusted catwalk we both ventured out onto. Ceremonies at the Mulholland fountain: a water offering, sigils, the naming of names. And a last group photograph, snapped by a bearded fisherwoman with the Queen Mary and Astronaut Islands behind us.
It wasn’t perfect. Despite lugging a heavy, 30-year-old raft >50 miles, we never put it into the water. Despite carrying full kit, and discovering ideal sites both days, we didn’t camp. But we did wade into the river beyond the 6th Street Viaduct at dusk and slosh it for miles through a concrete box canyon in a drizzling rain on the phase boundary of real danger. And we traversed the concrete desert south of Vernon, with commercial logistics operating on both sides of us, relentlessly, under sodium lights, in supernal silence. Unstable memories of the journey are already starting to decay, irradiating my insomnia. But that night, at least, will have a half-life like U-238.