Thirteen years ago today, having left Pittsburgh far behind, I stepped off an aeroplane at LAX and into a new life. Right about now, thirteen years ago, I was filling out paperwork for my first apartment. I had to spend the night in a fleabag motel on Hollywood Boulevard while they processed my application and ran a credit check. The summer of 1992 was without question the worst three months of my life. I was stressed out, homesick, lonely and depressed, broke, constantly sick with colds and the flu, and I was mugged and then shot at by a gangbanger in quick succession, not to mention rattled from dealing with my first- and second-ever earthquakes. I didn't bring enough money with me, and after a senior year in college jammed with a full courseload and two part-time jobs, I was exhausted, but I had to immediately find a job to pay the rent. What I needed was a vacation. Thirteen years later, I still haven't really had one. No wonder I find it so hard to relax.

But as I was hiking this morning, high atop the Hollywood Hills, watching a hawk float, suspended, on a rising column of heated air, it suddenly came to me that today was my Moving-to-Hollywood anniversary. I remember every single day of it, every degradation, frustration and misery, the pleasant interludes and scattered moments of joy, and yet, on the far end of it, it feels as if it's been only a fleeting second, a mere wisp of time.

From Cloud's Rest atop Runyon Canyon, I could look down directly at my old apartment building. I saw the streets I walked that first tumultuous day, thirteen years ago. I saw the fleabag motel where I spent my first night as a full-time Los Angeles resident. Did I wonder what was in store? Did I have any idea? No, I was too stressed and worried, too caught up with survival. But I wonder, I just wonder, if I stopped on the front sidewalk for a moment, and glanced up, way up and to my left, right to the top of the Hollywood Hills where the sun was just beginning to set, and focused my vision on a glimmer of something, an image of a man, my future self, waving and smiling and trying his best to communicate, long-distance, that one way or another, everything would be all right.

Wet Feeling Sugar