I be low in Los Angeles. It’s a line from one of my favorite rappers, J. Cole. The line seems apt for my current situation — three months in LA between Oakland and NYC — cherishing time at home with friends and family.

After a six-month sojourn in Oakland, I’m back in my hometown, chillen, lyin’ low before starting my next chapter out east.

I just finished Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion, and I didn’t like the book much until the end, where instead of journalistic reporting she discusses her upbringing in Sacramento, the Santa Ana winds of Los Angeles, her time in New York. It seems my antenna is primed toward material on the LA-NYC connection, as it seems to keep popping up in books, music and art.

As a writer, I’m proud to follow a timeworn trail, although I know my situation has peculiarities that make it unique, just as Didion’s route was unique and everybody’s path through life.

She was born in Sacramento, lived in New York in her twenties, and then moved back to California from there.

For her, New York sounded both incredibly intense and like the time of her life. Of course reading that makes me think about what my experience is going to look like. And as I’ve told people I’m moving to NY, I’ve had countless people tell me what my experience is going to be like.

But they don’t know me. I barely know me.

We’re so impressionable. Somebody’s opinion that has absolutely nothing to do with us may scare us, causing us not to follow something we feel in our hearts we’re meant to follow. We can’t let that happen.

My experience will be whatever it is meant to be; people questioned whether I’d be lonely in Japan. Sure, I was at times, but it was also the most formative period of my life. I don’t have the words to convey what my time there meant to me.

People wondered why I’d moved to Oakland, and they seemed a little scared for me. Turns out I loved it. Oakland is on another vibe, chock-full of history, character, diversity, and so much beauty. It holds a very special place in my heart.

People question whether I’ll be able to handle New York. I guess we’ll see. But something tells me I’ll be fine. And if I’m not, then at least I’ll know that I took a shot at living in my favorite city in the world.

There will be challenges, of course, just like in Oakland and in Japan. But I’m ready for whatever life presents. So let’s go.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my love-hate relationship with LA, akin to that of a family member. Los Angeles is home. I was born in Sherman Oaks and lived there as a little tyke, then was raised by the beach in Malibu. I know how lucky I am.

I come back to Malibu and walk along the ochre-colored cliffs above the beach, and marvel in absolute disbelief that I was raised in what is literally one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

But it’s not just beautiful. It’s magical. It has a sort of power that’s most potent in the winter, an energy that cleans my wounds comprising salt and sea air and love.

I come back to Malibu and feel nourished by the landscape — its soft undulations and hawk-laden skies, its owl songs of early mornings and jocular echoes of coyote cries.

I come back to Malibu and have experiences that very few people are lucky enough to have in this life.

It’s been hot lately. Last week I walked along the beach below those ochre-colored cliffs, took some sun and went for a swim. The water was cold and healing. Before I knew it I was swimming alongside a pod of dolphins. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. I was swimming backwards watching them, fins gliding toward and away from me, probably ten to fifteen of them just playing. I went underwater and heard the high pitch of them communicating.

To me? Maybe. It felt that way. You good, Vin? Yup, I’m good fam. One love.

I come back to LA and feel nourished by the people. It’s the people I grew up with, parents of my friends I see at the grocery store; the same delivery man at the pizza shop who seems to hustle every day of his life; the pastor from the trendy local church who looks exactly like Bradly Cooper and spotted me on the bench press at the gym (I swear I saw the good lord looking into his crystal-green eyes while sweating out one last rep).

My family, my friends.

The people are characters in LA. There’s no doubt about that.

I went to a sort of group therapy this week. I love slices of life like that, sitting and talking with people from all walks of existence. Therapy, and particularly group therapy, is one of the few places where you don’t have to keep up the facade of things being okay. You go around the room and everybody says: This is how I’m hurting.

You realize that everybody’s going through something. I enjoy sitting there and listening, just being present for these people as they relay their experiences.

I really tried to listen, as I find it fascinating to hear how people’s minds work. The way they tell the story that only they know. Because you’ve got only a few minutes to share, there’s no long backstory or explanations. Just your current situation. I teared up when I told my piece, and I told my friend that I feel grateful I can access those emotions, even in front of a room of strangers. I’m in the frequent criers club, baby.

So we go around saying all this gnarly shit, and then at the end you meet each other and have a piece of candy and smile. The world keeps spinning.

The duality of life. We are the darkness; we crave the light. And often that’s not somebody saying that everything will be okay. Rather, it’s knowing that others feel the same way.

Being human is a beautiful fuckin’ fight. As Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl says:

The Santa Ana winds are blowing at this time of year, and this is something Joan Didion discusses:

I’ve never thought about it this way. Didion describes the warm winds as foehn winds:

She describes how the winds allegedly cause headaches and allergies and nausea, but who knows; to my friends the Santa Anas mean offshore surf. So when the waves are big, they’ll be clean and perfect if kissed by those warm and rolling gusts.

I have a particular disdain for traffic; it’s fun to drive, but I’d rather not have to care for a car. This was a major impetus for moving to Japan, where you don’t need a car to navigate the endless avenues of exploration that weave throughout the landscape.

It’s a big reason I wanna live in New York. I’ll take a small apartment. In Osaka I lived in a shoebox; in Tokyo, a Malibu-sized kitchen. But in Japan I could step outside and, without a car nor a plan, wander to my heart’s content. The city is my living room. With my camera, journal and trusty pen, I can walk or hop on the subway and cross a city, even a state. In Japan, I could cross an entire goddamn country.

I crave the energy of a city where things are tight. The action. The sights and sounds and smells and chaos.

But I came to LA to rest before then. I’m usually not here planning to be, but when life throws me a curveball. I’m blessed to have a home to land. The past two months in LA have been challenging, but I feel without a doubt I’m here for a reason. It’s all meant to be.

So much love and so much growth have emanated from my time in LA; my family and friends have been there for me. I’ve been here for them, and we’re growing together.

I’ve met one of my best friends for countless sunsets in Santa Monica, where the view, again and again, has been impossibly clear. It looks like a 19th-century oil painting, the leaves viridescent leading down to PCH; fragrant roses in a garden basked in the orange light of dusk; and I gaze up at the curving palms, question marks towards the sky; and we sit and talk about life beneath the eucalyptus trees, and the sun goes down, and we watch for the green flash that never comes, and the world seems so good, and we’ve gone through so much, my friends and I and this town, yet we’re all here, enjoying the boardwalk, the California sun, the last of the light, and we could be anywhere in the world, but we’re here in LA, and that’s a wonderful thing.

A year ago, there was the Palisades Fire that obliterated the entire hilltop town. Just like Didion writes, the winds accentuate the city’s impermanence. But also its resilience. I’ve gone with friends for a hike up in the Palisades hills, and from the mountaintop we may view the entirety of LA. From there you can glimpse each pocket of the city, the high-rises downtown and the corridors by the coast, with snow on the crest of mountains in the distance.

In one panoramic view, one sweep of the head from left to right, you glimpse snow and the sea, mountains and deep blue infinity, this place of misunderstanding, of possibility and hope and almost too much goodness, and sometimes I feel guilty for wanting to run away, but it’s its perfection that deep down drives me away.

Maybe the landscape embodies what we feel inside; maybe the endless sunny days make me want to run and hide. Just because it’s sunny doesn’t mean we have to go outside. And yet I do, again and again, because the sun feels good and I feel bad if I don’t, so I get up before dawn so I can write in the quiet and the darkness before the sunshine shines. And in the darkness, in the stillness, before the world awakes, I can tap into a deeper truth, and step outside at 7 a.m. to watch the sky shift from midnight blue to purple to a sort of pink-white light.

Up on that hill, I imagine what this land must have been like before civilization came and changed it. No trees imported. Barren land. Spiritual land. There’s still something spiritual about it. The hills grow jade from the holiday of rain — there’s something in the wind. A change in the air, heat in the winter, a place to come and rest my head.

I’m thirty. It will be interesting to see how my relationship with this city changes over time. Will I live here one day? Who knows. I’ll come back whenever I can. I love LA for reasons I’m still trying to understand. LA will always be home. A place I may lie low.

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