blessed basin
Griffin Meehan
Tovaangar and the great blessed valleys, a city in shadow of towering purple mountain walls of creation.
this ancient basin like a divine embrace, sliding marginally northwestwardly year over year. an island called california, and the repercussions that entail.
it's been a long time, and there have been grievous wounds, sure, but the city has grown into something much more than its economic, industrial or cultural heartbeat of a prior golden age. it's something new. more than its climbing urban heat index, or the slipping memory of a greener, more bucolic realm. this city used to be something else, and when you listen, you can still feel it.
some people say that los angeles was once robbed of its natural beauty. sometime long ago. it was home to an untameable waterway, and when it rained, it rained hard, and the river destroyed homes. it wiped people away, some everything they had. if the angelinos were to stay and continue to call this place home, something had to be done. uncle sam opened his wallet and the great river was embalmed within a righteous concrete coffin. marked and tagged by man.
sounds to me like the paving was the project of a necessary evil. to protect lives during turbulent times. a time when the river threw punches back, and when we struggled to domesticate ancestral floodplains. barring a few lovely stretches, all 51 miles of the river was developed and transformed into the great american drainage ditch of emblematic forward progress. the west had been conquered. one nation, under god, (and certainly over nature!) from sea to shining sea.
the angelinos of the time didn't really bother with waiting to see if it was safe or not to return to their lives, and fortunately it didn't matter. the city was built, and now they say whatever was underneath is long gone. sealed away for its unpredictable and violent crimes against a just people. sure, that’s all true I suppose.
but then how come when I stand very quietly, I can still hear the rushing river?
a highway built upon the not-so ancient walking path of the first angelinos. a winding journey through the mountain pass, where the hills are scarred from generational flames.
now, I leave my window open at night so I can hear the bubbling stream. automobiles on the great 405, powered by an ancient energy. millions of years of microorganism detritus and sediment, compressed into penultimate form. drill baby drill.
does the twitching soul of the velociraptor still remain within my swishing and sloshing gas tank?
is the american motocross holy or just… there.
a venue of en-mass infraction-laden transportation meditation.
rubber on asphalt, water over rocks. what's really changed at all.
Griffin Meehan lives in Los Angeles and likes it here. Just the way it is. He's a musician, content creator, environmentalist, and lover of all the intricacies of his urban hometown. He runs a digital webzine about the internet and the local la diy music scene called mouse magazine at www.mousemag.net @mousemagazinecorporate on ig. He also runs a cult vanity license plate instagram account @plate_watch also on instagram dot com which is his favorite thing he's ever made. The People of LA say God Bless the Beautiful Basin and the City within.
