I’d seen a flyer in the law library and it seemed a little sketchy but I was tired of racing my roommate’s girlfriend to the shower so I drove out for a look. The girl living in the apartment told me that she didn’t want to give it up but she was doing a semester in London and didn’t want to pay rent on it while she was away and I wasn’t really listening because she’d opened the door and the place was so small that if you tripped on the threshold you’d fall out the back window but if you did you’d land on SAND, so much sand and surf and seagulls to the horizon. The rent was half the Los Angeles average, a fact that I was then too new to town to appreciate but which keep me here for the next sixteen years, long after I couldn’t hear the surf and SAND was in the cracks of all I owned.
I’ve changed jobs ten times; my landlord and three generations of their pets have passed away; I’ve outlasted a half-dozen housemates; I’ve replaced my favorite reading chair three times after salt and sun had their way; I’ve brought five girlfriends here, and I’ve also gone years without allowing a soul inside. Some months I’ve never seen the place in daylight, and other months I’ve spent less than an hour away a week. My first pictures of it were taken by cameras with film; my latest are videos with a phone. I’ve clung to this apartment as my most precious possession, and I’ve also raged at it like a cage while thousands of miles away my sisters grew from kids to moms of too many to remember and my parents had brushes with death. I’ve lived in it longer than the house where I grew up; I’ve shared an address with my landlady as long as my mom.
What if I’d never seen that flyer? Lived instead in an expensive Valley condo, forcing me to practice law or leave LA? Would I still love the sun? Would I have still adapted to months without the city and a social circle? Would I have had a dog that I loved or neighbors I hated, or experienced a fraction of the movies and books and games that now pack an imagination like a puzzle box with a picture too big for marriage and mortgage?
It’s cliche that life is the sum of a million decisions, yet half of me is made of one.