[Editor’s Note: Ms. Mansell is a burgeoning writer and a deeply searching thinker.]

“It’s very important to have someone to go to…

“Everybody should have that someone.” – F.M. Dostoyevsky

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Night.

Closing coffee shops.

Opening bars.

Broadway.

People – couples and lonely strangers.

Loud cars.

Red light. Yellow light. No rules.

[img]2689|right|Eugenia Mansell||no_popup[/img]The evening air complements tourists with a free smell of fresh weed (it’s all included). The smell of American freedom. Beautiful girls (maybe guys) are innocently fixing their tights in the middle of the street, glancing at the dark windows of passing cars. Everything and everybody doing its routine. The usual Hollywood evening.

Optimists are sitting on benches, memorizing the last 17 pages of something written by someone with some purpose, or without any.

Realists are wrapping, cutting, purring, heating, steaming, toasting – for here and to-go.

Those who used to call themselves pessimists but now are called bums, slowly are enjoying the gifts of life in every halfway empty or halfway full trash bin.

Hollywood: The one place in the world where all the dreams are teasingly close and hopelessly far at the same time.

Where there are so many places to see and no place to go.

Where fantasy makes the reality so unreal that it’s hard to believe that the latter exists.

Where to look at the stars, you actually have to look down.

Where it’s appropriate to be drunk in public and inappropriate to be sober.

It’s the place where you find yourself being lost and don’t know where it started or when it’s going to be over.

Hollywood is not a location. It’s the idea. The idea that only could have been born here in America.

Once you get to Hollywood, an interesting thing happens: Suddenly it loses all of its mystery. It becomes very real.

Hollywood is a dream, The American dream. Like every dream, it is beautiful and mysterious at its distance, much flatter and banal once it gets closer.

A dream should never become a reality because when it does, it no longer is a dream.

No, No, Not Reality

Hollywood never should become a reality, something you can touch or sit on. No, it should stay there in between the projector and the projection screen. The combination of lights and air. It should remain a spirit. A spirit of American cinematography. But never become a reality.

The reality kills dreams.

This reality is a mix. A mix of everything and everyone, all in imaginary colors, shapes, sounds, smells, styles, textures.  And none of it matches… You no longer are able to sort out things in this place. You can’t recall any style. It doesn’t fit any parameter. It’s just out of order.

“This is Hollywood!” America. The country of anonymous. It’s the union of ununited parts. It’s a chemical mixture. In any other place, this mixture would have exploded. But here it is reacting, defusing and producing new elements.  Elements that caused American culture.
Hollywood is the result of this reaction.

Going down the star boulevard, you still are daydreaming. Passing by famous bars and cafes, you still are naively looking for something that brought you here. Something that was so vivid and describable and texturable and even almost touchable suddenly no longer exists – now you can barely remember it. All it is is a gap, and it is being filled up with anxiety.

You decide to stop.

Why? You don’t know.

Ironically, you find yourself standing near the Armed Forces Career Center, and looking at a homeless guy, drunk and lying among two stars, tattooed on the skin of the enduring pavement. He is wearing a military uniform. Very symbolic.

You sigh, and you keep walking further, confused and numb. You keep smiling and thinking, “No wonder it is called Sunset Boulevard, not Sunrise.”

A rising author, designer, artist and entrepreneur, Ms. Mansell may be contacted at zazazu.zazazu@gmail.com