Praying in the City of Angels

Just before I left Santa Rosa, my hometown, for Los Angeles, my Auntie Anita told the following story, a version of which I’d heard from other tribal elders every time I moved to a new place: Once, while the people were camped along a creek some distance from the village, a man spotted a small deer, a doe, across the water. She was eating bark off a manzanita bush. It was late winter, the people down to their last rations of dried meat and acorns. Anxious to kill the deer, the man picked up his bow and arrow and started for her, despite people’s warnings. “We don’t know this place well,” someone said. “You haven’t prayed first, introduced yourself here,” another said. Some of the old people thought he wouldn’t even make it to the other side of the water.

But he did. Up the creek bank he went, following the deer into the brush. He chased her for a while, then, in a clearing, he took aim and landed an arrow square in her heart. She dropped. But just as he approached the crumpled body, he jumped back, startled, for he saw the body moving, rising to its feet. It was no longer a doe but an enormous buck, with a huge spread of antlers. The deer rose on its hind legs, and when the man looked, he saw that it had the face of an old woman, and she was laughing at him.

He ran, making it back across the creek to the camp. He told what he had seen. But that’s all he said. He was lost. He didn’t know where he was or even whom he was talking to. He died that way.

“Be careful,” Auntie said. “Pray.” She spoke in the native language, Kashaya Pomo, each hissing “s” and glottal stop coated with admonishment.

I knew that praying in Los Angeles would be difficult. Yes, I could pray, sing the old songs in my home, but where would I find a place in the city, find its spirit. Where would I introduce myself to it and listen for it to talk back? How would I keep myself from becoming lost?

After a few frantic weeks of unpacking, settling into an apartment on top of a landlord’s home, and preparing for and teaching my first classes at UCLA, I came back to these questions and set out to find a place. It would be a place I could go to regularly. A place of solace. A place where I would know both this city and remember who I am.

I don’t pray with much, no stretched hide drum to pound, no elaborately beaded and painted gourd rattles to shake. Only a tiny prayer basket, not much larger than an eraser head, that I hold in my hand or keep pinned to my shirt with a strip of ribbon. At home, before I sing, I light a chunk of dried angelica root and smudge myself with its smoke. Outside, the ceremony wouldn’t be any different.

I placed my basket and gnarled root inside my navy Kipling locker bag. In my nylon ski pants, tank top and tennis shoes, I looked as if I was going to the gym. It was fall, late October. At 5 in the evening, a hazy hue lit the buildings and distant mountains a blood orange. Five o’clock: traffic. Something I hadn’t thought of. On Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, I found myself inching toward Highland. I was on my way to Sunset Ranch, a horse stable above Beachwood Canyon. I’d been to the ranch once before, with a friend when I was first here looking for housing.

I parked in front of the big red barn. Tucked at the back of the canyon, with no view of the city, the barn and horse corrals seemed far from the urban streets minutes away. With locker bag flung over my shoulder, I hiked up the main trail, which took me above the ranch and into the hills. A coyote darted across the path and scurried behind a clump of sumac. There, I thought, I’d sit. And what a view: southwest clear to Long Beach; to the east, downtown Los Angeles; and, just across the canyon, the observatory, like a castle atop a promontory overlooking the city. Already, lights shone here and there like white wildflowers on the valley floor. I sat on a flat rock just off the trail.

I took out my basket, pinned it to my shirt. Next the angelica, which I lit with my Bic. Smudging myself with the dried root’s sweet, celery-smelling smoke, I heard footsteps. I turned, found a woman, mid-30s, powder-blue sweat suit, blond ponytail bobbing, jogging past. I was off the trail and sitting low, so she didn’t see me. Her dog did. The moment I turned again to face the city, the black German shepherd was at my back, white teeth snarling, barking madly. I jumped to my feet, further unnerving the dog, then froze, my hands in midair, as if under arrest. “Superman, Superman,” the jogger called, trotting to us. She pulled the animal away, explaining, “He usually isn’t this bad.” “A good thing,” I answered.

On all fours, I dug in the dirt, turning over small rocks in my search for the burning angelica I’d dropped. I sat until dark, watching for smoke to rise, the beginning of a brush fire. Then, as I was leaving, I miraculously spotted the finger-sized piece of root burning on the trail.

About a week later, I tried the trails on Mulholland, near Laurel Pass. Again, desert flora: red-stemmed sumac, silver sage, California iris, thirsty-looking manzanita. And again, a wondrous view: north over the San Fernando Valley to the San Gabriel Mountains. The trails are for those who, like me, come to revel in the view and open space. Still, at 2 on a Thursday afternoon, I found the area deserted. I hiked east, toward Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and settled on a rock where I could see the broad valley below. I sat a long while, absorbing the sounds of birds and the occasional distant rumble of a truck on Mulholland. I smudged myself. After a short prayer of thanks, I began a prayer song for good luck, for clearing the way, only to be interrupted by loud, angry voices speaking Japanese. A young couple were strolling my way in the midst of a vigorous argument. Suddenly they stopped behind me, still bickering. Did they see me? Did they care that I was there?

Back to my car. Remembering Griffith Park, which I’d seen below the observatory, I headed down Laurel Canyon, then east on Franklin once again. Certainly I could escape into the hills above the park. But hardly had I left my car and started past the slides and picnic tables when I noticed two young Latino men following me, one about 20 yards behind the other. I kept on, eventually finding a log overlooking a quiet gorge. Just as I sat, I saw, through the foliage of yellow cottonwoods, a white tank top, brown shoulders, and below, one young man fondling himself. And where was the other?

Driving home that day, I began to think that what I had experienced in each place--the jogger and her dog, the Japanese couple, the young Latino men--were signs, spirits of sorts, introducing me to L.A. Each place provided a vivid memory, after all. But then a particular image, a memory, set in: the coyote. Trickster. The first thing I’d seen on my journey. Why hadn’t I realized before that I was being fooled? Was I fooling myself now? Was I lost?

Things just got more absurd. Having arrived early for a meeting at the Bel-Air Hotel, I found my way to the edge of its notorious swan pond and began to pray; no angelica or prayer basket, just praying, only to see Geraldo Rivera on the footpath coming my way.

Thinking that the problem lay in wanting my place to be quiet, I sat in a busy schoolyard in Boyle Heights, after visiting my cousins there. Teens in baggy shorts shooting hoops after school. Girls with teased hair and penciled eyebrows waiting on the sideline. Mothers pushing babies in strollers. Old folks on benches. Just pray, I told myself, talk quietly to the place. And, BAM! I found a basketball in my face. “C’mon, dude,” a voice called out from the court, “we need another man.”

I stopped searching after that. I prayed in my home. Looking out my second-story window, where I had a partial view of downtown Hollywood, I sang the old songs. My home. My center in Los Angeles. And wasn’t that the story, finally? Mine, like millions of others’ here?

Then, one day around Christmas a year later, after a late lunch in Century City, I found myself trapped in 5 o’clock traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard. Impatient, wanting to get off the crammed street, I cut in front of another car. The driver, a 40ish, conservative-looking black woman, rolled down her window and yelled, “You dirty white bastard!” Later, I would recall the incident and think of my light skin, the fact that I am a “mixed blood.” The woman didn’t know who I was or what I was--which must’ve touched me somehow. But I wasn’t thinking of any of that then. I stayed where I’d moved, in front of her, her eyes in my back. I started singing and just kept on.