I've moved back to LA and while I was lying on my perfectly named Casper mattress I began to think of all the friendly and for the most part instructive ghosts that I travel with. That we all travel with, I think.
They are not the ones who we over pack in our matching set of emotional baggage which is our most portable neuroses overhead carrier.
No these are memory ghosts which are the free radicals of the soul.
The agency of the medium that is required to have direct contact them is the simple ritual of closing your eyes or daydreaming to places far, far away.
And suddenly there they are, like an old movie unspooling on the expansive movie screen of your open eyes.
I lived here for over 25 years before I returned to the crèche of my childhood, New York, where I did a ten-year inventory of my LA life and came to the eventual conclusion that the Atlantic wins over the Pacific simply because it is in New York which is the open round the clock for business, Disneyland for grown-ups, Lion King or not.
I've been flown back to launch a new TV series that I co-created with Mr. Adorable Famous Person Face so against my better judgement: Welcome to Tour of Improbable Tour of Duty Tour 2016-17.
I'm living where I lived for most of those years: Studio City, or as Phil Collins would have called it, "Stu-Stu-Studio City" and it's beyond strange being here.
Most major cities transform themselves over a ten year period, usually for the better, although NYC, especially with all those garish steel and glass apartment buildings that are sprouting up around the High Line is starting to make the city look like downtown Dubai.
LA is perennially incubator hot and the baby, as of this writing, is still not cooked yet. Since age is the cancer of LA anything that has even a whiff of history or nostalgia is eliminated like the books in Fahrenheit 451.
The Chateau Marmont, the single most haunted structure in town, remains the one true exception to the rule. And yet it continues to draw in the hip crowd perhaps because they unconsciously sense the presence of all those deeply emotional and mostly lost ghosts who are desperately looking under every bed and in ever closet for Cecil B. DeMille. They simply cannot rest until they have their close-up.
The ghosts that I see as I drive through the intestinally serpentine streets of LA are the ghosts of my children when they were young and beamed so bright that their brilliant toddler lighthouses of joy could blind any passing over LA cosmonauts.
I see me at different ages too. More chick than chicken (with a rooster's swagger) fueled with tinsel hung glamorous dreams and impossible success.
I can also hear the madrigal choir of tumbling ocean voices who whisper, fervently, in tones that even Siri could not hear, that were said to me either with benevolence or like carefully aimed, about to burst hand grenades that did in fact go off and partially cripple me.
I can still feel their impact to this day.
You do not grow up in here, in Neverland. It is literally against the law. They don't even say the word "pregnancy. They say, "Oh, my new baby is getting some work done."
That virulent resistance to the substance that we all have the inalienable right to inherit is so absolute, it forces all the inhabitants of Planet Hollywood to live a life of lies and self-image distortions with the, same loving touch as once upon a time convicted serial killer Richard Speck.
Any available woman over 50 here, advertises herself on Match.com as someone who rides horses like Wonder Woman, sells real estate (almost always with pumped up lips that looks like little pontoons), does lunatic quality cartwheels on public beaches and prefers to date men between the ages of 12 and 13.
They also post the deadly three pictures, whose code "Infernos" Professor Langford could figure out in between eye blinks. Picture one is the one that makes them look how they wish they looked. (It is often their professional 8X10). Picture two is the slow dissolve towards a soon to shock reality and Picture three is the one that looks like a woman that would make Donald Trump throw up all over his made in Guam suit. Often the Caucasian woman in Picture One becomes an overweight, I'm sorry, curvy, Asian woman with some challenging on going dental issues.
So: if you are dating out here, my heartfelt advice is to head right for the truth of number three. Number four by the way is usually a sonogram photo or a picture from kindergarten graduation which is where all the sadness plays in. I mean it has been at least 50 years since they were in the playground, but I don't dare tell any of them because they are so looking forward to their snacks and naps.
So, ghosts.
In order to get through this spirit bound life, I think we have to become the equivalent of sheepherders in order to figure out a way to round up all the many sheep that we need to count before we can finally....finally go peacefully to sleep.
Disclaimer: Do not run from them. Do not antagonize them and do not give them water after midnight, because I promise you they will wet the bed.
Love your ghosts. Respect your ghosts. Learn from the dead and I promise you, you will have a very happy and peaceful life.
And by the way, ghosts have access to "Hamilton" tickets so be nice them
P.S. If you really miss your parents, they are amongst the flock, forever standing in the brilliant sunshine with flung-open arms and still want to touch your hair, tell you tuck in your shirt and sing lullabies to you.
Run to them.