Image 1: 2023-01-31 Pasadena City Hall
The second day has been a rolling success. Preparing for meeting, in the hotel lounge, for the afternoon with the Dean of School of Theology and Mission at Fuller, Dr. Amos Yong, and Dr. Kirsten Kim, the Paul E. Pierson Chair in World Christianity and Associate Dean for the Center for Missiological Research.
Map: 2023-01-31 Westwood to Pasadena and Back
This took me to Pasadena and I allowed sufficient time, in the hour long drive there, to look around. I walked around and through the famous City Hall and had lunch at the California Pizza Kitchen. The journey along the San Diego and Ventura freeways blew my mind in the landscapes which seem to swallow you up. George, my uber driver, gave me glorious tour which for him was a charge into the normal scene. And I guess it is the stranger who is taken by the unfamiliar and understand the freedom of foreign travel.
Image 2: 2023-01-31 With my uber driver, George
After lunch and before the Fuller meeting, I walked up to the place where 30 years ago, Ruth and I stared at the San Gabriel mountains. It is a gigantic presence pressing against the Pasadena landscape on the Foothills Freeway. Unfortunately, my photographs do not do the visual sensation the justice it deserves. You have to be here to see it.
Image 3: The view from Elysian Park of the Los Angeles River, Elysian Valley, 110 freeway and the San Gabriel Mountains at sunset. Photo 54777494 © Stevehymon | Dreamstime.com
The landscape is overwhelming for the visitor. LA is spacious but also dense in odd way. The wide roads and freeways provide the sense of space, as well as the flatness; and yet there are so many twist and turns through the hills while remaining at the same height. Much concrete and steel, and yet the many, many, palm trees and the hills, seem to give life to the urban machine. Freeways appear like a mass of arteries. And there is much clogging, as well as the racing heart.
Image 4: 2023-02-04 Los Angeles Night, on Night 6
The Uber drive back to the hotel was the whole of dusk from 5.00 p.m. to 6.00 p.m. The great, western, orange glow made the whole journey magical. I was in shadowy valleys and I was in the large concrete plains. The journey never seemed to end. It is what dreams are made out of. Hollywood dreams. But the night falls.
Neville Buch