getting it slowly. getting LA

Although I still have to see much more of the United States in order to dare to actually say anything close to valid about it I get this feeling of slowly 'getting' LA. Meaning, I start to get the idea, I start to get why people would choose to live here over San Franciscowith such a nice and just so much more accessible escape like
LA is maybe in a way the most distorted and yet most pinpointing caricature of Western Society as projected in the world wide propagation and spreading of popular culture, entertainment 'post modern culture' , attitude and media.
It is the farthest off the modern European take on society and yet its youngest offspring and in turn, ironically enough, its most prominent, positively or negatively, influence.
LA is a gold mine, a modern version of the greedy, crazy, maniac Gold diggers of the old days, ruthlessly digging holes into holy mountains and the like, yes yes, everybody lives here with a dream, almost doggedly and grimly defending the idea of the American Dream at its outermost frontier. (well, lets not count the space for once, the NASA and their waste of money infuriates me and the justification of many NASA directed operations escapes my comprehension).
LA is where you get the crazy jobs, where people are crazy, where people are daring, living at the verge of schizophrenia, often represented in a crazy lifestyle, anything you can think of you will find here in its extremes.
My sister's lifestyle being the best example for that, the rags to riches story right there, in the middle of the dirty carpet where she and I sat many a night, sewing salvation army dresses into Oscar night wear for the red carpet appearences of my niece, giving her all the credit for having designed and created the dresses...Sometimes we also would change a 700$ piece into her own creation but that would be the exception from the rule.
After a year living here I start getting the allure of the car culture, the insane love of the Angelenos for their cars, I start liking the residential bums in Hollywood (yes, I do realize when there is a new bum on the plane!), the residential crazy people (once I have my camera going I would love to post some pictures!) and the miriads of actors and musicians and wannabe artists who try to make a fortune off the walk of fame. I don't know yet where I will go in my life, who I will become, but it is damn sure, that this experience is, after all, extremely important for me and this foreboding sense that I had back in Europe, that this experience would help me to understand and discover my 'American' roots which I always felt to be there, seems to be right in the end...

The thing is, my family is actually quite an interesting clash of those two 'Western' worlds, not amiss the compelling influence of both, Native American (and hence anything 'native' or 'tribe' related) and Hippy legacy. My mother coming from the wilderness and pioneer life in Alaska, with idealistic parents that escaped the dooming Second World War from Switzerland, living their own dream, subsequently the American Dream, bringing the native influence into our family by raising us close to nature and relating native lifestyle to our upbringing. My father coming from a Nazi background, a cultural rich Germany, bringing the controversy and difficulty and the predicament of the second generation and the Hippy legacy to the table, raking and stoking our interest in education, counter culture and reason.
He embraced the American musical culture while my Mom completely missed out on all the popular movements (she missed the beatniks, the hippies and of course the punks), pursuing her dream of creating a perfect little kindergarten, which she did and I am very proud of her achievements, as I am of my father's. He brought European culture and the importance of having roots (having lost his own) to our minds. He travelled the world with us, both intellectually, culturally and physically.

So here I am now, in the middle of Hollywood in this wonderful second hand bookstore on Franklin and Bronson and start forageing for philosophy books, books on war and art and religion. Walking the streets with the sudden realisation that I have to look past the present time and popular culture to understand the sense of life that people have here, to understand this part of America, to understand this caricature more accurately and to see where I find myself in it and where I want to go with what I know.

I heard there is a recylcing movement in Hollywood. :))