Lost Angles

We arrived on what seemed to be a scrambled signal. After leaving Barstow in the early afternoon, two Saturday's ago, my beautiful sister, my cat, and I became a red blood cell in a large clog in the artery if Interstate 15. The subsequent detour added 4 hours to what would normally have been and hour and a half trip. By the time we arrived in Los Angeles it was dark. There were a number of phone calls made to my new roommate and to the U-haul station where I was planning to drop of the truck and the trailer I was pulling behind it, which contained my car. After three or four missed or mistaken exits my sister and I reached the Uhaul place 30 minutes before they were going to close. I figured I would just drop off the trailer that night and then drive the truck to my new apartment, unload it, and return it the following day. Getting the car off the trailer took no time, but due to the angle of the turn from the street getting the truck and trailer into the Uhaul lot wasn't going to happen unless I drove around the block and came in through the other entrance. So, I pulled into traffic and headed to where I thought I could circle the block. The first street was blocked by a police car parked in the middle of it diagonally. So I turned on the next street. I came to a very narrow corner turn with cars lining both sides of the street. Half way down the narrow street I could see yellow police tape pulled across road. I stopped the truck and got out, but I could see no one. I wasn't sure what to do. Checking my watch I saw that I only had 20 minutes before the Uhaul place closed. My sister was still there waiting without any way to contact me or anyone and no keys to the car. Crossing the police line seemed like a sure way to complicate the matter so instead I tried to back the Uhaul - trailer and all - down the narrow, car-lined street and around the corner. I had been anxious about the car trailer for the whole trip - worried that I wouldn't have the grasp of physics necessary in order to extract this elongated vehicular concoction from the clutches of some tricky turn or tight parking place. Well it was my imagined destiny manifested. I could not, for the life of me, get both the trailer and the truck to travel in reverse in a straight line and the panic mounting in my body was destroying my limited grasp on spatial relationships completely. Eventually a cop made his way from the dark turn down the street and inquired as to my situation. I explained and begged him to let me through the tape, promising I would simply turn the corner and be gone. He explained that I had stumbled onto a murder scene. Someone had just been shot and no one was allowed on the street and no cars were allowed through the tape. I asked him if he knew how long the tape might be up. He said, "At least an hour, probably more like three." By this time the Uhaul place was closed. I turned on the hazard lights, locked my kitty into the cab of the truck and ran the half-mile back to Uhaul. My sister was standing outside the gates, alone, dressed from head to toe in a bright read jogging suit. This was Saturday night in Central LA. I explained the sitch to her as we walked back to the truck. We met a number of people who lived in the area while trying to back the truck out. One nice man explained that by jiggling the steering wheel back and forth as I drove in reverse I could keep both the truck and trailer straight. A nice older lady moved her car out of the way so I could move the truck further down the street. Eventually, even though backing around the corner proved impossible, we were able to park on the side of the road. I left my sis once again - this time in the cab of the truck and this time with a phone - and ran back to get my car from in front of Uhaul. I came back and picked her and my cat up and we headed to my new place. After two missed exits and another 45 minutes tacked onto our travel time, we made it to my new place. Nothing terrible had happened the whole trip. We'd experienced a lot of static - everything taking considerably longer than we'd planned, everything more expensive, everything involving a lot of extra steps - but I can't say anything bad happened. We were safe, my cat was almost eerily well behaved on the road (he's made up for it since), the truck drove beautifully, and the trailer was the secure the whole way. …And now here I am; still a little tense from the whole experience even a week or so later; still running into complications and costs that I hadn’t anticipated. But here I am. I love my apartment. I love my roommate. I’m scared of this decision. I miss everyone I know, terribly. Terribly. Most mornings, staying under the covers has been the most attractive option, but I resist…most of the time. I forget the sad and frightening things when I go jogging and see twenty or so old Russian men playing chess outside in the park or when I’m suddenly face to leaf with some crazy dinosaur looking space plant that just happens to grow in the irrigated desert of LA– seriously the landscaping out here is other worldly – or when I drive by the ocean or when I make a stupid impromptu movie with the camera on my laptop.
There’s a lot to settle and a lot to start.
It’s been very hot the last two days, both inside and outside of me. I feel like lava pouring over its self into rounded angles - moving, changing shape, waiting to cool.