ESSAY
By Rebecca
Helm-Ropelato
Rebecca Helm-Ropelato is a freelance writer living
in Lariano, Italy.
March 20, 2005
During the almost
three decades I called Los Angeles home, I became accustomed, as
Angelenos do when traveling, to the lame jokes about earthquakes and
California crazies, the raised eyebrows from those who regard L.A. as
an X-rated phantasm, and to the look of awe at times in the eyes of
some dreamers, young and old, longing to explore the city's legendary
myth. Revealing where I was from always evoked reaction. Since I have
moved away, it has been the same.
I now live in Lariano, a
tiny town in the countryside south of Rome. I moved here almost four
years ago after marrying an Italian. When he suggested we live in
Italy rather than the United States, I yielded without much struggle.
I envisioned living in a traditional Italian villa, one of old, heavy
stone construction—a stereotypical image picked up from old
movies. Instead, arriving here, I found myself unpacking in a modern
new house, California ranch in design, with palm trees and cactuses
in the frontyard. In a way, it was a reassuring sameness.
Perhaps
because I had so many unfamiliar things swirling around me, including
a new language, the enormous difference between the size and culture
of Brobdingnagian L.A. and Lilliputian Lariano wasn't uppermost in my
mind. But often, the first thing I heard was: "Los Angeles to
Lariano!" The magic of the City of Angels was potent even here,
I found.
It altered the way many saw me, but I considered the
effect largely a distortion. L.A. is certainly big, powerful and
celebrated. It's stressful and challenging, a bewildering and
fascinating maze of cultures, subcultures and lifestyles, and
cherished home for millions who wouldn't live anywhere else. But it
is just a place, I thought, like so many other places. And a place to
which I've said goodbye.
It wasn't even a regretful goodbye.
When I lived in L.A., I often felt hostile toward the city from being
trapped for hours in traffic or being forced to endure the
ill-tempered behavior of people with too many differences in the same
place at the same time. I echoed common complaints: L.A. sprawls too
much, has no architecture to speak of, blah, blah, blah. I was more
critic than fan.
One day a few months ago, I decided to write
an article about Lariano. I began to look closely at this nondescript
village, wondering why its longtime inhabitants love it so. It was
then that I understood how completely my everyday perspective is
colored and shaped by my memories of Los Angeles, and that those
memories are filed in my mind under a powerfully resonating name,
home. I never see—cannot see—this little town
without the warm visual overlay of the enormous city there. And all
my previous hissing and booing has transformed into
applause.
Writing a description of the single, short and
narrow main street that blips through Lariano, I saw the multi-laned
L.A. streets extending for miles from downtown to bump into the
beaches of Santa Monica, Venice and Malibu. In that same picture were
the many rows of tall, skinny palm trees filtering the Southern
California sunshine onto the sidewalks and pavement. Lariano sits on
the side of a mountain just outside a dense chestnut forest. Here are
vistas of the Apennine ranges and of the Mediterranean glimmering far
in the distance. As I focused on describing this, pictures of the Los
Angeles skyline rose companionably in my mind, daytime and nighttime,
the snow-peaked mountaintops of Big Bear on clear days in February,
and the intensely colored sunsets so routine on the Pacific
horizon.
New images kept announcing their presence: the
lassitude of a Sunday afternoon, the air stirred and warmed by Santa
Anas; the subtle perfume of desert air; the oddly comforting quiet of
ordinary neighborhoods in the Valley, especially in the months when
the temperature rises above 100 degrees; the broad, broad beaches,
spreading north and south along the South Bay and Malibu coastlines;
and so many freeways, always there, always near, always offering
escapes to other places.
From more than 6,000 miles away, Los
Angeles turns its poetic face to me. Now my mind is filled with sweet
reflections; they are neither happy nor sad, just immediate and
powerful. The life editor within looks back in wonder at this big,
incomprehensible city and deletes the dull and annoying.
It
feels redundant to mention how famous Los Angeles is across the
planet. Other great cities find fame as places of extraordinary
beauty, architecture, history or culture, qualities that Los Angeles
shares in varying degrees. But L.A. is singular: Films and television
have made it a ubiquitous presence, either as foreground or
background. Los Angeles has become the world's hometown. Millions who
have never been there consider it familiar. It is luminous in global
culture. Angelenos may take it for granted, but it knows its own
grandeur. And when you say you're from there, some of its stellar
light falls onto you.