A Wild Surmise

Los Angeles Is a Virgo

118 Los Angeles Is a Virgo for Luis Alfaro Born like me on September fourth, ruled by Mercury, the eternal child is what the magazine horoscope promises, though LA’s a little older, a little dustier, maybe even more varied than the crennalations in my cerebral cortex, more full of running glyphs than the convoluted cranial bag of fits and starts I’ve been juicing around in since my own little 9/4 entrance into the world of things and beings. No wonder I love this city, song of myself. Choose between little corner taquerias and Thai home cooking joints, amazing as the expectations of angel sightings we daily live in, tongues of flames leaping not from the heads of gods or laps of goddesses, but from green and red and yellow chilies swirling in the devil’s brews along the boulevards, little food stands in corner mini-malls with four or six paint-stripped slots to slip a car into, then walk to the order-window, pay and move quick-time to the “take-out line / pick up food here station,” the sliding glass door ringed with salsa cups, straws in white paper sleeves, chili-flakes in a shaker or “what do you call this?” condiment of the culture from which this food is delivered and delivering us unto. (oh, the tongue is so much wiser than the mind!) 119 Shrimp burritos, now where did they come from? Fish tacos—it took me a long time to imagine them without conjuring up an image of a mermaid in a blanket. I would pass up a trip to Chinois if some local vato loco could lead me to the right Cambodian market cum café and point out the fish sauce that would light up my lips like neon without putting me in a coma. I am immoral in my desire to sniff the length of, rub between my fingers, and roll around in my mouth the flavors, bread things, and common seasonings of all of my compatriots here at the blue-bleeding westward sea-shelf of the Pacific where the currents of human traffic move and cut into each other like the vast mile-wide streams of water streaking toward the poles, weaving into the web of cloud, wind and weather systems that billow into space like gossamer skirts, like a dancer’s pantaloons. And again the rivers of the earth, like a blue tattoo, come into view through the cloud veil which daily swings in and out over Mother Sea, over Mother Hand-Me-Over, Mother-Carry-Me-On. Here’s the common culture the anthros are looking for when I try to order in my home-grown white girl Spanglish, hoping that when they call my numero ocho y something (’cuz I’m bad at numbers in any language), I’ll pick up my own order and not some other mother-tonguer’s Polski Wyrob-strewn seven-story-high Dagwood sandwich-to-go 120 with a Handy-Wipe and Pepto Bismol pink triangle in the bottom of the bag (50% post-consumer waste, soy ink, no fingerprints or bloody glove). And off I’ll go, swirling into the traffic, lunch in lap, knowing I have three days to finish all matters related to communication since my ruling planet and that of my home town is taking off backwards for three weeks (the old Mercury-in-retrograde motion), a little planetary hiccup home town and I are both fabulously famous for. ...